The Science of Evaluation

Always engaging and relentlessly pushing the boundaries, this is a must-read from a pioneer in realist research.

Evaluation researchers are tasked with providing the evidence to guide programme building and to assess its outcomes. As such, they labour under the highest expectations - bringing independence and objectivity to policy making. They face huge challenges, given the complexity of modern interventions and the politicised backdrop to all of their investigations. They have responded with a huge portfolio of research techniques and, through their professional associations, have set up schemes to establish standards for evaluative inquiry and to accredit evaluation practitioners. A big question remains. Has this monumental effort produced a progressive, cumulative and authoritative body of knowledge that we might think of as evaluation science? This is the question addressed by Ray Pawson in this sequel to Realistic Evaluation and Evidence-based Policy. In answer, he provides a detailed blueprint for an evaluation science based on realist principles.

Autorentext
Given my job title, it will come as no surprise that my main interest lies in research methodology. This does not quite bracket me with the technical nerds, however, for I have written widely on the philosophy and practice of research, covering methods qualitative and quantitative, pure and applied, contemporaneous and historical. There is a common realist thread underlying every word, albeit a modest, middle-range, empirically-rich kind of realism.

Inhalt

Preface: The Armchair Methodologist and the Jobbing Researcher
PART ONE: PRECURSORS AND PRINCIPLES
Precursors: From the Library of Ray Pawson
First Principles: A Realist Diagnostic Workshop
PART TWO: THE CHALLENGE OF COMPLEXITY - DROWNING OR WAVING?
A Complexity Checklist
Contested Complexity
Informed Guesswork: The Realist Response to Complexity
PART THREE: TOWARDS EVALUATION SCIENCE
Invisible Mechanisms I: The Long Road to Behavioural Change
Invisible Mechanisms II: Clinical Interventions as Social Interventions
Synthesis as Science: The Bumpy Road to Legislative Change
Conclusion: A Mutually Monitoring, Disputatious Community of Truth Seekers