ABSTRACT
Evaluations can contribute to democratic governance, to social betterment, to organizational learning, and more. But how do we know which types of evaluation are more likely to make what kinds of contributions? The idea that it would be helpful to increase the evidence base about evaluation practices and their consequences is not new (e.g. Shaw, Greene, and Mark, 2006). With such empirical data, the evaluation community could construct a “descriptive theory” of evaluation, or an empirically based assessment of what evaluations look like under different conditions and with what consequences. Viewed from this perspective, a growing evidence base about practitioner evaluation could help answer questions about which approaches to evaluation, implemented how, and under what conditions, lead to what kind of improvements in professional practice.
