My interests include food systems, support for culinary enjoyment rather than turning meals into formulae, global health enhancement, policy and strategy and everyone who deprecates reductive, reactive actions.
My contributions
Neutrality-impartiality-independence. At which stage of the evaluation is each concept important?
DiscussionRacism in the field of evaluation
DiscussionThe farmer as a key participant of M&E: lessons and experiences from Participatory M&E systems
DiscussionUsing synthesis and meta-analysis to make the most of evaluative evidence: what is your experience?
DiscussionRecurring errors in public policies and major projects: contributions and solutions from evaluation
DiscussionIs this really an output? Addressing terminology differences between evaluators and project managers
Discussion
Lal - Manavado
Consultant Independent analyst/synthesistGreetings to Emilia and other members!
As a person who ascertains the value of evaluation with reference to its pragmatic import of a project in planning or completed to any given extent, I am happy to see your identification of the current debate as reductive.
Of course, this mode of thought seems to be so deep rooted in almost every field, and what has been done so far to rid ourselves of this incubus appears to be to invent a new phrase to describe it, viz., ‘thinking in silos’. Its extension into evaluation results in the inevitable quality vs. quantitative discussion.
I think it would be fruitful to think of evaluation as an effort to determine the adequacy of an objective to be attained or achieved by a project. This adequacy naturally depends on a number of variables one has to take into consideration which in turn vary with the circumstances. Let me give a few examples:
To sum up then, evaluation may some day, would be concerned with adequacy of a result with respect to its quality and quantity optimally achievable under an existing set of circumstances.
Best wishes!
Lal.