ABSTRACT
The major criterion of the success of program evaluation ought to be the extent to which it is taken into account in altering program policy, administration, or practice. This chapter has emphasized the likelihood of discrepancy between formal goals and actual goals, because it is at that point that these observations from organizational theory become central to program evaluation. If the results of program evaluations are to be taken into account by practitioners, administrators, or policymakers, those results cannot be derived from phantom programs or spurious goals. A genre of evaluation research that tends to be ignored by evaluators, because it is not labeled "program evaluation." Experienced and competent practitioners can be assumed to know what they are trying to do even though they may not be able to articulate those goals. Part of the evaluator's task then is to discover what in fact is being attempted.
