Principles of Evaluation.

The article explores the principles of evaluation research. Evaluation is assessment of value. Value defines an individual or for a group of individuals what ends or means to an end are desirable. Applied to action programs, evaluation research refers to the procedures of fact finding concerning the degree to which a specific action program achieves specific results, both intended and unintended, and which elements in the situation, or in the methods used hamper or foster the process of change. In more practical terms, evaluation aims at providing a systematic and comprehensive measure of success and failure. Evaluation gives evidence how we can learn from the failures observed and how improved action programs in operation can be guided and controlled. In this paper, three dimensions of evaluation research are described. They are: Assessment for whom, recipients field workers and other agents of change, policy makers and the scientific forum. Each of these categories expects a different type of evaluation result; Assessment by whom, self-evaluation, both by the individual and by the local community or other social unit, evaluation by the responsible field workers and other community or social unit, evaluation by the responsible field workers and other professionals, evaluation by local and national superiors and again scientific evaluation. These categories have each their own standards of judgments; The last practical dimension deals with the time and the stage of evaluation. This time-dimension makes the conceptual frame of evaluation operational.