Values in evaluation and social research PDF
Preview Values in evaluation and social research
values evaluation soAcNDi" al■ . research values evaluation soAcND"i al■ . research Ernest R. House Kenneth R. Howe Sage Publications <§ International Educational and Professional Publisher Thousand Oaks London New Delhi Copyright © 1999 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: 9 Sage Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: [email protected] Sage Publications Ltd. 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU United Kingdom Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. M-32 Market Greater Kailash I New Delhi 110 048 India Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data House, Ernest R. Values in evaluation and social research / by Ernest R. House and Kenneth R. Howe. p. cm. ISBN 0-7619-1154-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-7619-1155-3 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Evaluation research (Social action programs) 2. Social sciences—Research. I. Howe, Kenneth Ross. II. Title. H62 .H645 1999 300'.7'2—dc21 99-6434 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 01 02 03 04 05 7 6 5 4 3 2 Acquiring Editor: C. Deborah Laughton Editorial Assistant: Eileen Carr Production Editor: Denise Santoyo Editorial Assistant: Patricia Zeman Designer/Typesetter: Lynn Miyata Cover Designer: Kathy White For Geogdia, Is that all there is? cma In loving memory of jeam CONTENTS Preface IX Acknowledgments xi Introduction: The Problem of Values xiii The Argument of This Book XV Critiques of Other Views xvii The Deliberative Democratic View xix Part I. Value Claims 1. Facts and Values 3 The Fact-Value Continuum 5 Values as Emergent 9 Values and Democratic Deliberation 11 2. Evaluative Reasoning 15 Evaluation Audiences and Stakeholders 19 Points of View 21 An Example 24 Deliberation in Context 27 Part II. Critiques of Other Vi■:.' :,■ 111 3. The Received View 33 The Radical Undecidability Thesis 36 The Emotive Conception of Democracy 47 4. The Radical Constructivist View 55 Radical Constructivism Characterized 57 Facts, Values, and Epistemology 61 The Practice of Evaluation 69 5. The Postmodernist View 73 Facts, Values, and Epistemology 75 The Practice of Evaluation 77 A Critique of Postmodernism 82 Part III. Deliberative Democratic Evaluation 6. The Deliberative Democratic View 91 Deliberative Democratic Evaluation 97 Locating Deliberative Democracy Within Political Theory 106 7. Good Practice 111 Critical Questions 113 Other Examples 115 A Hypothetical Example 124 Conclusion: The Role of Evaluation in Society 131 Deliberative Democracy 131 Characteristics of Evaluation 134 Characteristics of Evaluators 135 References 139 Author Index 145 Subject Index 147 About the Authors 151 PREFACE ur aspiration in this book is to reconcile evaluation theory with general currents in contemporary philosophy. Al- though evaluators regularly borrow ideas from philoso- phers, many important insights of the past 20 years of philosophy remain untapped. Hence, we, an evaluator and a philosopher, have taken on this joint task. The task is not simply one of converting concepts from one field to the other. The discourse styles of the two fields differ significantly, and even though we have tried to smooth out these differences, the reader may experience occasional jolts as we switch from one discourse to the other. Philosophical discourse tends to be denser, tougher, and, yes, more irritating than that in evaluation. This is Socrates7 legacy. We apologize in advance to those who may take offense at this more aggressive style of analysis. Those who read philosophy will be used to it. To accomplish this task, we focus on the infamous fact-value dichotomy, an unresolved issue central to evaluation. We see how this issue is addressed in philosophy currently and apply these insights to evaluation theory, as well as add our own original analysis to the IX
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