Realistic Evaluation shows how program evaluation needs to be, and
can be bettered. It presents a profound yet highly readable
critique of current evaluation practice, and goes on to introduce a
`manifesto' and `handbook' for a fresh approach. The main body of
this book is devoted to the articulation of a new evaluation
paradigm, which promises greater validity and utility from the
findings of evaluation studies. The authors call this new approach
`realistic evaluation'. The name reflects the paradigm's foundation
in scientific realist philosophy, its commitment to the idea that
programmes deal with real problems rather than mere social
constructions, and its primary intention, which is to inform
realistic developments in policy making that benefit programme
participants and the public. Ray Pawson and Nicholas Tilley argue
with passion that scientific evaluation requires a careful blend of
theory and method, quality and quantity, ambition and realism. The
book offers a complete blueprint for evaluation activities, running
from design to data collection and analysis to the cumulation of
findings across programmes and onto the realization of research
into policy. The argument is developed using practical examples
throughout and is grounded in the major fields of programme
evaluation. This book will be essential reading for all those
involved in the evaluation process especially those researchers,
students and practitioners in the core disciplines of sociology,
social policy, criminology, health and education. `This book is a
must for those engaged in the field, providing a fully illustrated
text on evaluation with numerous examples from the criminal justice
system. Unusually, it offers something for the academic,
practitioner and student alike. I found Pawson and Tilley's latest
work on evaluation an enjoyable and informative read. For myself
their "realistic evaluation" clarified and formalised a jumbled set
of ideas I had already been developing. Although not everyone will
agree with the methodology proposed by the authors, this book is a
valuable read as it will cause most of us at least to review our
methodological stance' - International Journal of Police Science
and Management `This is an engaging book with a strong sense of
voice and communicative task. The voice is sometimes strident, but
always clear. Its communicative qualities are evident equally in
its structure: lots of signposting for the reader within and across
chapters' - Language Teaching Research `This provocative, elegant
and highly insightful book focuses on the effective incorporation
of actual practice into the formulation of evaluation methodology.
What a pleasure to read sentences like: "The research act involves
"learning" a stakeholder's theories, formalizing them, and
"teaching" them back to that informant who is then in a position to
comment upon, clarify and further refine the key ideas". Pawson and
Tilley have given us a wise, witty and persuasive account of how
real practitioner experience might be encouraged to intrude on (and
modify) researchers' concepts about program processes and outcomes.
This holds important promise for achieving something that is
devoutly to be wished: closer interaction among at least some
researchers and some policy makers' - Eleanor Chelimsky,
Past-President of the American Evaluation Association `This is a
sustained methodological argument by two wordly-wise social
scientists. Unashamedly intellectual, theoretically ambitious yet
with a clear but bounded conception of evaluation. It is
articulate, occasionally eloquent and always iconoclastic, whilst
eschewing "paradigm wars". The Pawson and Tilley "realist" call to
arms threatens to take no prisoners among experimentalists,
constructivists or pluralists. It is the kind of book that
clarifies your thoughts, even when you disagree with everything
they say' - Elliot Stern, The Tavistock Institute
General
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