Recommendations

From EvaluationWiki

Two kinds of recommendations associated with evaluations need to be distinguished. A macro-recommendation is advice about the disposition of the evaluand-for example, that is should be further funded, not funded, combined with some other project, etc. A micro-recommendation suggests some change in the way some element of the evaluand be run, designed, or supplied/staffed, e.g., that a particular database be replaced with one that all staff can easily use. (One might refer to the latter as formative recommendations and the latter as summative recommendations.) Although clients often think that both of these are an essential part of any competent evaluation, this is not the case. The latter often 'drop out' of the process of evaluation as a useful by-product, and their appearance, if helpful, is a sign of a thoughtful and knowledgeable evaluator, but the former are another matter altogether. An evaluation does not logically imply any macro-recommendation-for example, the correct evaluation of a program as overpriced, badly run, producing little impact, and little needed, does not-surprisingly-imply that it should be dropped or have its funding cut. This is because the decision-maker often has several major considerations to balance against merit or its lack, which is all that the evaluator is in a position to advise about; and the decision-maker is often not in a position to be able to inform the evaluator about these, even if the evaluator were any kind of expert on weighing them appropriately, which is rarely the case. For example, there may be legal obligations, community politics, and/or ethical considerations that must be weighted more heavily than lack of merit (the example given, which is a real one, involved all of these which obliged the foundation to continue the program). Evaluators tend to think that merit should always be the dominant consideration in actions affecting the future of evaluands, but this is not realistic. The most that can be said at the end of an evaluation is that if merit is the only or an extremely dominant consideration then so-and-so is recommended.