Demystifying Evaluation

Practical Approaches for Researchers and Users

Parsons, David, David Parsons

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781447333906
• eBook ISBN: 9781447333920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Social research practitioners and others working in the public and voluntary sectors, in academia and consultancy are increasingly under pressure to provide policy-related evidence with limited resources and rising expectations. Demystifying evaluation is an accessible introductory guide setting the foundations for tackling those challenges, explaining the options open to evaluators, their merits and uses, and how to make appropriate choices of research methods.

Drawing on his experience of policy and programme evaluations for the public sector and outside, David Parsons provides a practical roadmap cutting across different evaluation theories. He covers issues such as managing expectations of evaluation, using and mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, engaging stakeholders and providing action-orientated approaches to help end-users.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of examples
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Glossary of selected evaluation terms
• Chapter 1. Introduction
• Chapter 2. Compilation: setting the right foundations
• Chapter 3. Composition: designing for needs
• Chapter 4. Conducting process evaluation
• Chapter 5. Conducting economic evaluation
• Chapter 6. Conducting impact evaluation
• Chapter 7. Analysis, reporting and communications
• Chapter 8. Emerging challenges for evaluation and evaluators
• References
• Annex A: The ROTUR Framework for managing evaluation expectations
• Annex B: Ready reckoner guide to experimentation choices in impact evaluation