Program evaluation

From EvaluationWiki

A major division of modern evaluation that acquired an identity as a professional activity in the US in the 1960s when researchers began working on large federal efforts to extend and support education. (There were precursors in ancient China and Egypt, at least.) Focusing on this activity, some ideas of the special nature of evaluation began to emerge, eventuating in the formation of some professional associations of evaluators, and the idea of evaluation as a discipline in its own right began to crystallize. See transdiscipline. A number of 'models' for program evaluation emerged and continue to emerge-including checklist models like CIPP, or the Program Evaluation Standards; the black box model; the goal-achievement model; the illuminative and responsive models; the advocate-adversary or jurisprudential model; the connoisseurship model; the medical model; the social science model; and more recently, utilization-focused evaluation, the empowerment model, the program theory model, and the appreciative inquiry approach. All of these and more are defined in the 4th edition of the Evaluation Thesaurus (Sage, 1991), and a few of the more commonly referenced ones are defined in this glossary, as indicated by bold face.