seven - Discovery through dialogue and appreciative inquiry: a participative evaluation framework for project development

Summary

Introduction

The requirement of funding bodies for projects to report on the delivery of their outputs is clearly acceptable because it is reasonable to require a project to demonstrate contract compliance. At the same time, an evaluation that is limited to such a report is trapped in ‘audit logic’ (O’Neill, 2002) which is incapable of fully supporting project development. Indeed, we argue that a listing of outputs constitutes little more than an audit and barely deserves the name evaluation if it cannot capture process or so-called soft outcomes (Dewson, 2000) or a statistical report of deliverables.

We accept, however, that many evaluations that do focus on such outcomes are burdensome on the project members’ time and energy. This chapter explores ways in which these can be evaluated manageably and creatively to support project development. In making this exploration, we first discuss the posture of the evaluator and, second, we present some ideas and illustrations from the perspectives of realistic evaluation (Pawson and Tilley, 1997) and appreciative inquiry (Ludema et al, 2001) respectively.

The evaluator's posture

Project teams are often under pressure to secure the services of an external evaluator who will take up an objective stance. We fully accept that an external evaluator needs to keep some ‘reflective distancing’ from the project (Wadsworth, 2002a, 2002b) in that s/he needs to be capable of standing outside of the project even while working alongside its members. But we do not accept that an external evaluator should see the evaluation site as a research field that she visits dispassionately for the gathering of data, as if researcher distance guaranteed objectivity and reliability.

The call for objective external evaluation is often tied to the positivist belief that there is a ‘truth’ to be got at through the deployment of an impartial evaluation capable of identifying the ‘facts’ that are thought to correspond to truths. We think that it is more realistic to approach evaluation research as a means by which increased understanding about a project and the issues it addresses is developed (Baume, 2003). We are aware that some project members feel that they have neither the time nor the inclination for this kind of evaluation, either because the obligation to evaluate has been imposed upon them or because funders have already prescribed how an evaluation must be conducted.