Considerations for evaluation Flashcards
What do they have to think about when they are asked to evaluate a piece of public policy. Name the four questions
1) Role of evaluation in decision making
2) Methodology of evaluation
3) ‘Fit’ between methods of evaluation and the organisation
4) Evaluator- government relationship
What are the two different types of functions that evaluation could be having in decision making?
Are we trying to find blame?
Or are we trying to solve a problem
Is it likely that the evaluation is addressing whether to terminate a piece of policy or continue with it?
If not, why?
Not that likely that the government would terminate; very expensive and politically costly
What is the more likely function of evaluation than deciding termination of policy?
Maybe we address improvements in the piece of public policy.
Why is it unlikely that government will want to terminate a piece of policy?
Because will not want to waste all those resources they used bringing it to fruition.
What is the role of evaluation often in decision making?
Its a political strategy, not just talking about evaluation in benevolent means of what is going right and wrong
What is the strategy in looking like you you are evaluating a piece of public policy (Think of Grenfell)
Especially with public enquiry, if you look like you are evaluating it then it will appease the general public.
Evaluation is often tokenism, define.
The practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing.
What is the second question that should be considered with evaluation?
Methodology of evaluation; how do they go about evaluating these different measures.
methodology; What is the huge bias towards since 1990s?
huge bias towards quantitative methods.
What does quantitative data mean?
Why is it concerning about the huge emphasis on quantitative data?
It means statistical analysis, pure data.
Concerning because data can tell you a lot but cannot interpret the complexity nuance of public policy.
What are often used as a gold standard within the umbrella term of quantitative methods?
Randomised trials for evaluating a piece of policy.
But does it really suit the complexity of public policy? does quantitative methods suit all of this.
What is the other method used that is not randomised trials?
systemic literature reviews
What do systemic literature reviews tend to be?
Tend to be replication of what comes before, tends to be that people pick on research that has always been used by governments to justify what they have done (not new data.)
The strategy involved in finding statistics is…?
strategy made by government, the strategy is heavily biased towards finding statistics that suit that strategy well. Its a very political process, you can find statistics that prove anything and everything, they are not objective.
