ABSTRACT
In a positivist paradigm, the core belief is that reality is out there and by gathering ‘facts’ it is possible to find out what is happening in reality. Within this positivist paradigm one can think of different types of research inquiries – descriptive-analytic, exploratory, explanatory, evaluative, and so on. While most policy discussions are based on some understanding of the causes and their effects on various outcomes and the models and theories of different social science disciplines try to capture the causal connections in an abstract way, for an evaluative inquiry one applies certain normative criteria to judge states of affairs. A piece of research can be the outcome of an exclusively evaluative inquiry, such as measurement of poverty or inequality. Evaluative inquiry also makes us sensitive about the multiple possibilities as far as the normative positions behind evaluative criteria are concerned, even though evaluative research usually involves sophisticated mathematical and statistical methods. With an overview of the debates surrounding the epistemological issues, the chapter is weaved around this core idea based on examples drawn on the literature on measurement of poverty, inequality and human development.
