Evaluation as a Democratic Process: Promoting Inclusion, Dialogue, and Deliberation

Inclusive approaches to evaluation emphasizing participation andcollaboration can enhance the efficiency of data collection,improvelearning, and strengthen commitment to act on results andalso reflect the highest aspirations and ideals of a democraticsociety. The contributors to this volume use case studies todiscover the lessons learned so far from successful andunsuccessful attempts to democratize evaluation. They offer tenquestions to guide evaluation planning from a deliberative,democratic viewpoint, and look at a failed attempt at inclusiveevaluation to analyze how deliberative intentions can be distorted.Focusing on participation, they discuss how best to use differenttypes of dialogue to make evaluation more participatory, examine anevaluation program in a psychiatric institution to explore thechallenge of employing participatory, democratic approaches in ananti-democratic environment, and more.

This is the 85th issue of the quarterly journal New Directions forEvaluation.

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.