Introduction

At its heart, evaluation is something simple made complex. Much of the complexity comes from the necessary choices within the (very) many ways in which it can be carried out and the diverse situations those choices need to reflect. Professor Scriven, a giant in the evaluation cosmos, suggested that balancing this simplicity– complexity dilemma with the numerous method possibilities came down to one overriding consideration: ‘Practical life cannot proceed without evaluation, nor can intellectual life, nor can moral life, and they are not built on sand. The real question is how to do evaluation well’ (Scriven, 1991).

Purposeful evaluations, and this book, are centred on making appropriate choices about ‘how to do evaluation well’. Making those judgements, however, can be discomforting especially when surrounded by long- standing controversy about what methods and techniques work ‘best’ for what evidence and when. To avoid that confusion, a solid starting point is realising that making sound methodological judgements is not confined to knowledge about, and selecting appropriately from, a technical menu. To be purposeful, an evaluation needs to combine both technocratic knowledge with ‘political’ sensitivities about the practical context of the situation for what is being evaluated – the so called ‘evaluand’.

Combining the technical and political, however, may not come easily to many evaluators, especially those coming from research or analytical backgrounds (as most do), where the technical comes most readily to the fore. Yet, bringing together these two dimensions is at the heart of doing an evaluation ‘well’ not just for decisions made at its start but from end to end. Superimposed on this, is the more prosaic need to tread carefully in accommodating the often- conflicting demands of time, budgetary and other resource pressures on an evaluation with the need for responsiveness, relevance and robustness.