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EXAMINATION OF 18 PROMINENT EVALUATION REPORTS FOUND THAT THE ACTUAL DESIGN, MEASUREMENT, AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURES WERE OFTEN DIFFERENT FROM PROCEDURES COMPATIBLE WITH THE KINDS OF PROGRAM UNCERTAINTY DESCRIBED IN THE EVALUATION REPORTS. IMPROVEMENT IS SUGGESTED BY INCORPORATING ORGANIZATIONAL CONCEPTS THAT WOULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE SELECTION OF EVALUATION METHODS.

The US has always valued science as both a source of knowledge & a contributor to political freedom. In this view, science is inherently progressive & must not be contaminated by political ideology. However, science is increasingly caught in ideological & political disputes. The implications of science controversies for managing science policy are discussed, & the twenty-year fetal research dispute is examined. Fetal research was a promising area by the early 1970s, but became involved in the battle over abortion after Roe v. Wade, at which time the antiabortion movement pressured elected officials to ban fetal research. Congress initiated a temporary ban on federal research, but by the mid-1980s, twenty-five states had passed their own guidelines. In the late 1980s, the issue resurfaced, with new arguments in favor of research due to advances in medical technology that changed the issue to one of blocking medical treatment rather than blocking research. Controversies such as fetal research help science by forcing discussion of differing values & issues. 16 References. A. Cole

Implications of scientific controversies for science policy; impact of abortion politics on the 20-year fetal research dispute; US.

This article explores several ideas about naturalistic studies of the uses of policy research. The central thesis of this article is that naturalistic research is well suited to several important questions about the use of policy analysis. Policy analysis is a form of organizational communication. In particular, it is a form of argumentation and story-telling that occurs within the existing processes of influence and sense making in or ganizations. This view of policy research calls for methods that are sensitive to the way actors ascribe meaning to analysis and to the historical and social context of the communication.

Books reviewed in this article:Peter W. House, The Art of Public Policy Analysis.Robert F. Rich, Social Science Information and Public Policy Making.Robert A. Scott and Arnold R. Shore, Why Sociology Does Not Apply; A Study of the Use of Sociology in Public Policy.

What is the role of program evaluation research in making and implementing social policy and how do program evaluators view the social programs they evaluate? This article discusses the findings of two closely related studies that examine these questions from the perspective of organization theory. These studies found that program evaluations rely on methods of research that do not correspond to the extent of uncertainty in social programs over goals and causal knowledge, and that most evaluations define organizational effectiveness solely in terms of goal achievement. In addition, of the various groups with a stake in the evaluation process, only federal and top program administrators influenced the implementation and interpretation of the studies. These findings, when taken together, suggest that program evaluation research acts more to augment administrative control than to increase our understanding of the effects of social policy.

This article argues that concepts useful in examining for-profit organizations are frequently misapplied in evaluating human service organizations. The assumption of most program evaluators that human service organizations are purposive rather than expressions of social values may encourage service organizations to become rigid, narrow, inefficient, and costly. It is suggested that evaluators should emphasize appreciation, avoid allocation and personnel decisions, be drawn from in-house staff, and judge more than outcomes. In addition, evaluators should use their experiences with social programs to help in developing a theory of human services as value-rational organizations.