Evaluation as a Democratic Process: Promoting Inclusion, Dialogue, and Deliberation New Directions for Evaluation, Number 85

Inclusive approaches to evaluation emphasizing participation and collaboration can enhance the efficiency of data collection, improvelearning, and strengthen commitment to act on results and also reflect the highest aspirations and ideals of a democratic society. The contributors to this volume use case studies to discover the lessons learned so far from successful and unsuccessful attempts to democratize evaluation. They offer ten questions to guide evaluation planning from a deliberative, democratic viewpoint, and look at a failed attempt at inclusive evaluation to analyze how deliberative intentions can be distorted. Focusing on participation, they discuss how best to use different types of dialogue to make evaluation more participatory, examine an evaluation program in a psychiatric institution to explore the challenge of employing participatory, democratic approaches in an anti-democratic environment, and more. This is the 85th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions for Evaluation.

KATHERINE E. RYAN is associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. LIZANNE DESTEFANO is associate professor of educational psychology, associate dean for research, and director of the Bureau of Educational Research at the College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.