Mind the Gap: Perspectives on Policy Evaluation and the Social Sciences

Over the past twenty to thirty years, evaluation has becomeincreasingly important to the field of public policy.The number of people involved and specializing in evaluationhas also increased markedly. Evidence of this trendcan be found in the International Atlas of Evaluation, theestablishment of new journals and evaluation societies,and the increase in systems of evaluation. Increasingly,the main reference point has become an assessment ofthe merit and value of interventions as such rather thanthe evaluator’s disciplinary background. This growingimportance of evaluation as an activity has also led to anincreasing demand for the type of competencies evaluatorsshould have.Evaluation began as a niche area within the socialand behavioral sciences. It subsequently became linkedto policy research and analysis, and has, more recently,become trans-disciplinary. This volume demonstratesan association between the evaluation tradition in aparticular country or policy field and the nature of therelationship between social and behavioral science researchand evaluative practice. This book seeks to offercomprehensive data, which lead to conclusions aboutpatterns that transcend the gap between evaluation andthe social scientific disciplines.Mind the Gap has a twofold aim. The first is to highlightand characterize the gap between evaluation practices anddebates, and the substantive knowledge debates within thesocial and behavioral sciences. The second is to show whythis gap is problematic for the practice of evaluation, whileat the same time illustrating possible ways to build bridges.The book is centered on the value of producing useful evaluationsgrounded in social science theory and research.