Getting Real About What it Takes to Conduct Evaluation Research: What Do You Need to Know?

Anthropology prepares researchers for many aspects of evaluation work, but academic training provides insufficient preparation for four roles expected in evaluation research: organizational consultant, negotiator, project manager, and knowledge disseminator. The article discusses the knowledge, dispositions, and skills necessary for each role, and provides real world examples to illustrate the challenges of evaluation research. The authors also identify the purpose of formative evaluation–‘to provide ongoing feedback to program staff in order for them to make mid-course corrections’ (142). Simon and Christman note, ‘In order for programs to benefit from formative evaluation findings, the organizations in which they are situated need to be ‘learning organizations.’ The concept of organizational learning emerged in the 1980s to describe organizations that are able to refine their understandings of the problems that confront them and respond successfully by encouraging a culture of collaboration, openness, inquiry, and continuous improvement (Senge 1990; Argyris and Shonn 1978). As organizational consultants, evaluators informally assess the organizational learning capacity of the groups and institutions with which they work. They seek to understand the supports for and obstacles to organizational learning so that they can then help their clients make the changes necessary to learn from the evaluation and integrate new knowledge into program planning and decision making’ (142).