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AbstractMichael Scriven, who is situated on the valuing branch of the Evaluation Theory Tree, argues for the importance of a checklist approach in evaluation. To do so, he points to the value of the approach in other fields and industries, and then turns his attention to his own Key Evaluation Checklist. In particular, he proposes a formative evaluation that focuses on process, outcomes, and generalizability to identify key aspects of an evaluation of the Women Affirming Motherhood program.

AbstractScriven describes how he believes the early death of his father, constant intercontinental moving he experienced as a child, and associated fractures in relationships he began with peers influenced his "attitude towards the value of reason," which is his "main professional area of publication and evaluation." He recounts stories of developing his own evaluation life by running away from home at age 14 (following his father's example); writing an award‐winning essay on quantitatively evaluating acts of valor (as he wanted to be a RAF pilot like his father); pursuing math, science, and philosophy in college; critiquing parapsychology; evaluating sports cars; exploring and teaching critical thinking; deciding where to go to university and where to work; and eventually being pulled into professional evaluation by being asked to work on a White House task force that included evaluating university courses and curricula on critical thinking; and collaborating with other early evaluation theorists.

AbstractThis chapter outlines the logical infrastructure that makes it possible to claim that one can validate values, both at a general and a context‐specific level, other than by direct deduction from other value premises. To make the argument, the author distinguishes between the logic of valuing and the logic of evaluation, the former being the primary focus of the argument, and analyzes the invalidity of the long‐standing value‐free doctrine in social sciences. The author discusses several ways in which we can establish factual as well as evaluative premises by observation, inference, or definition, that make it possible to infer beyond reasonable doubt to evaluative conclusions. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.

Evaluation is one of a number of so-called 'higher order' cognitive processes that are involved in the brain's survival activities, including those extensions of basic coping processes (such as concept formation) that go into scientific and technological developments (like hypothesis testing). Some of these have been brought into various theories of learning and teaching. For example, in the (Benjamin) Bloom taxonomy, evaluation is listed as the intellectual activity at the top of the pyramid of skills at which teaching can be aimed. In this note, we'll look at some of the other cognitive processes that need to be distinguished from evaluation, and look at unpacking evaluation into some component processes. Doing this will help us avoid some confusions that hamper effective evaluation work, and also provide another kind of foundation for an epistemology and logic of evaluation.

Comment on the following quotation from the latest issue (9/07) of a fairly new (1995) journal, Sociological Research Online published in the UK.

The seventh issue of this journal is going online tomorrow, and contains a number of papers on methodological issues as well as reports from around the globe that tell us about the progress of evaluation in distant lands--in this issue, there are contributions from Ireland, China, the South Pacific, Australasia, and one with ten authors from the 'newly independent states' (ex-USSR).

To what extent should the evaluator be an active agent in the events surrounding or incorporating or following whatever s/he is evaluating? This question comes up to haunt us in the field from time to time and it does not have an easy answer. It is part of a larger methodological question about proactive versus reactive research. The term 'participant observer' reminds us that even the observer's role has been, rightly or wrongly, avoidably or unavoidably, sometimes blurred into the participant's role. And the evaluator is often more 'involved' in events than the observer, because in formative evaluation, or even in summative evaluation that will be published, what the evaluator is doing will often have some direct effect on what happens thereafter.

There has been extensive discussion of the relation of evaluation to: (i) research; (ii) explanations (a.k.a. theory-driven, logic model, or realistic evaluation); and (iii) recommendations, from each of which it is logically distinct, although there are times when they do and should overlap in practice. Making the distinction is not a mere linguistic issue since it vitally affects practice and the whole process of learning and teaching evaluation, and responsibly providing evaluation services. It is now time to look more carefully at the ghost at the banquet, (iv) prediction.