Standing back and looking forward: Editors’ reflections on the 20th Anniversary of Evaluation

Abstract

For us this is a special issue at a particular moment: the journal Evaluation is marking its 20th anniversary, an occasion that challenges us to stand back and take stock -and to do so in a more nuanced way than the Social Science Citation Index on its own allows. 1 It offers an opportunity to reflect on the aspirations that launched Evaluation back in 1995, on where we are now, and where we might be going. As the editors of this special anniversary issue have all been active protagonists since the journal's launch, we are well placed to give an account of ourselves -even though many of our editorial priorities, developed in dialogue with authors, referees and readers, have only become clear to us through a rear-view mirror.

How to normalize reflexive evaluation? Navigating between legitimacy and integrity

“…Over the past decades, a wide variety of views on the purposes and roles of policy evaluation have proliferated in evaluation literature, accompanied by myriad evaluation approaches and methodologies (Stern et al, 2015). Some more recent approaches share that they are stakeholder-oriented and search to better address the complexities of the phenomenon under study while contributing to its goals and ambitions (e.g.…”

An examination of evaluation users’ preferences for program- and actor-oriented theories of change

“…The wide influence of the realist school on evaluation theory and practice in general (see also Stern et al, 2015), and on ToCs in particular, has led both implementation and program theories to combine process and outcome evaluation. They thus focus on the processes that actually took place and link them to expected results in order to judge how specific elements of programs contributed to specific outcomes.…”

Learning from seasoned evaluators: Implications of systems approaches for evaluation practice

“…In the last 20 years, many prominent evaluators have been turning to the systems fields for concepts, theories, and methodologies to inform evaluation practice (Barnes et al, 2003; Byrne, 2013; Cabera et al, 2008; Callaghan, 2008; Eoyang and Berkas, 1999; Forss et al, 2011; Morell, 2010; Reynolds et al, 2012; Rogers, 2008; Sanderson, 2000; Westhorp, 2012; Williams and Imam, 2007; Williams and Hummelbrunner, 2011). The implications of this turn for evaluation practice are not yet clear (Mowles, 2014; Stern et al, 2015). Moreover, interest in systems concepts (e.g.…”

“…There has been considerable discussion of systems approaches in evaluation, but little empirical research investigating implications for evaluation practice. Stern et al (2015), for example, assert, ‘how to take complexity into account and how to accommodate it, defining what we mean by complexity, distinguishing complexity science from general systems theory and critical systems heuristics remains open to debate. Some progress is being made at the conceptual level .…”