Looking Through the Right End of the Telescope
An evolving dialogue has emerged over the past few years between advocates, evaluation professionals, and funders concerned with evaluating advocacy. An earlier focus on questions regarding whether it is possible to evaluate advocacy has given rise more recently to a concern with producing innovations aimed at responding to the real and perceived unique challenges to evaluating advocacy.
The authors argue that the focus on new tools and approaches as part of this ongoing dialogue may be overstated. When considered from a perspective of how advocacy can best be served by evaluation, the authors argue that a disproportionate focus on tools can cause other important issues to be overlooked—in the context that not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured. Vigilance to the risks of overemphasis on tools, and understanding their limits, improves the chances of developing new—and using existing—tools or models in a way that helps support more effective advocacy.
Bibliographic Details | |
---|---|
Author | Jim Coe & Rhonda Schlangen |
Publisher | Center for Evaluation Innovation |
Publication Date | June 1, 2011 |
Publication City | Washington, DC |
Publication Work | |
Resource Type | |
Resource Focus | |
Audience | |
Region | |
Keywords | |
Submitted to Point K | January 22, 2013 - 5:22pm |