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Drawing upon the experience of the Social Welfare Research Unit in undertaking evaluations with public-sector organizations and projects, this paper contributes to the development of a critical methodology for evaluation. The Unit undertakes research and evaluation to promote social welfare. Researching for change for the better involves us in critical social research methodologies, engaging in research and evaluation to contribute to changing policies and practices. The research program of the Unit is eclectic in its methods, analysing data both quantitatively and qualitatively, drawing upon feminist methodologies and upon the contribution to research methodology made by new social movements such as disability research (e.g. Oliver, I992). This paper is concerned with evaluation methodology. Its purpose is to explore ways in which evaluation may be developed as critical, informed by critical social research methodologies and by postmodernist approaches to discourse and values.

If evaluators do not borrow from the natural and social sciences for their methods, what do their enquiries look like? Many who seek to answer that question pursue naturalistic or case study or qualitative approaches, conceived of as a reaction to scientism to produce a more faithful response to the social and political nature of the world being evaluated. Among those approaches is constructivism, familiar in the philosophy of science, science education and psychology. This is a general critique of science for its failure to acknowledge that theories and realities are not 'out there' waiting to be discovered or uncovered, but are constructed in the minds of individuals or in the discourses of groups. This article looks critically at constructivism as it has appeared in the field of evaluation and presents it as an overreaction to the problems of objective reality.

In seeking an evaluation approach and organizational framework for a complex cross-cultural evaluation conducted in India, a multiple-case, replication design, with each individual case embedded with multiple units of analysis, was found to be well suited to the challenge. Enabling a quantitative look at individual units as well as at intervening factors, while promoting a somewhat goal-free look at overall contexts, the approach produced overarching cross-case answers while still remaining sensitive to the innuendos and idiosyncrasies of each cultural setting. A discussion of the rationale behind the approach is followed by a brief description of its application in the India study in terms of data collection, analysis and presentation of findings. With the demand for cross-cultural evaluations increasing, ongoing exploration for new conceptualizations of evaluation is warranted.

This article addresses two issues: the theoretical strengthening of the participatory evaluation concept, and the strengths and weaknesses in practice of this approach. It demonstrates how participatory evaluation can be strengthened conceptually and theoretically if based on fourth-generation evaluation and Giddens's structuration theory. Through an analysis of two evaluations in Zambia and Swaziland, strengths and weaknesses of applying the approach in practice are illustrated. The analysis includes elements from Foucault's theory on power, and from theories about decision-making and learning from political and organizational science. It concludes that, using a participatory evaluation approach, interaction and thus learning processes among stakeholders are initiated and facilitated, and that this benefits the ongoing project-implementation process. The characteristic asymmetrical relationship of power between donor and recipient is potentially ameliorated, allowing the less powerful a greater influence on the evaluation and the ensuing implementation process.

The field of program evaluation has expanded rapidly over the past three decades so that evaluation of programs is standard practice in many government agencies. One development is that evaluation activities have moved inside large government agencies with the establishment of internal evaluation staffs, procedures and policies. This study examined empirically the development of evaluation issues and processes in one branch of the National Science Foundation in the USA. The study, which involved 3 years of intermittent participant-observation and 44 interviews, indicates that evaluations (in this office) are heavily influenced by the way the work is organized and produced, as well as by the usual considerations that shape evaluations elsewhere. In particular, this paper addresses two primary issues identified in the study as critical to the successful establishment of an evaluation office: ( I ) the evolution of an evaluation culture within the organization, and (2) the management of a semi-internal, semi-external evaluation production process.

The Debates, Notes and Queries section provides an opportunity for evaluation-related issues to be debated as well as for more general interchange. Debates can take the form of sustained arguments by the advocates of different approaches or of briefer thoughts or notes. Contributors may also wish to comment and raise questions about material that has previously appeared in the journal or simply use the section to draw readers' attention to relevant issues, ongoing research, evaluation activities and other events.