Participatory Evaluation in relation to:

Interested in Participatory Evaluation?

Welcome to a webpage designed to serve as a guide and entry way to some of the many resources on the subject of participatory evaluation. Whether you simply want to include more stakeholders in an assessment process, or you seek to create a just, democratic and sustainable world, useful materials await a click away.

Usage of the Term

What does the term, participatory evaluation mean? Here are a few illustrations from the range of ways participatory evaluation is understood.

"Participatory evaluation aims to create a learning process for the program recipients that will help them in their effort to reach desired goals."
D. Greenwood and M. Levin, Introduction to Action Research, 1998, p. 239.

"Participatory evaluation is a process of self-assessment, collective knowledge production, and cooperative action in which the stakeholders in a development intervention participate substantively in the identification of the evaluation issues, the design of the evaluation, the collection and analysis of the data, and the action taken as a result of the evaluation findings."
E. T. Jackson and Y. Kassam, Knowledge Shared, 1998, p. 3.

"One of the negative connotations often associated with evaluation is that it is something done to people. One is evaluated. Participatory evaluation, in contrast, is a process controlled by the people in the program or community. It is something they undertake as a formal, reflective process for their own development and empowerment."
M. Patton, Qualitative Evaluation Methods, (2nd ed,), 1990, p. 129.

Organization of this Guide

Participatory evaluation takes various forms in different fields and domains. This particular webpage organizes the concept into five (somewhat overlapping) categories, representing participatory evaluation as:

• related to action research and community-based research;
• a tool of participatory development, especially international development;
• rendered in human services;
• part of a trio of approaches as framed by the evaluation field's professional association in the U.S.; and
• related to community indicators.

For each of the PE perspectives noted above, this guide identifies two types of relevant web-based materials,

1. an overview, and
2. gateways to resources.

Those sites selected for overviews are ones which describe or introduce participatory evaluation from one of each of the chosen perspectives. Gateway sites are ones which take the researcher to particularly rich collections of resources, most of which entail materials in both related theory and practice, often including how-to manuals. Brief annotations are given for each site.

Have fun exploring the selected resources by category using the side bar items at the top of this page.

Comments on this site or on participatory evaluation? Send email to: Annalisa Lewis Raymer