ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that programs are deliberately designed attempts to produce social change and that their evaluation is a test under conditions of ongoing social life, with subjects who are involved in the program as a segment of their everyday existence. The program posits that when certain specified changes are made in ongoing social processes, specified consequences will occur. There is a mystique about objectivity which pervades all of the sciences. Donald Campbell reminds us that scientists at their best are passionate believers and not detached neutrals. According to Campbell, the safeguard in scientific research, is not objectivity, but its replication by scientific competitors. Applied research also challenges some fundamental procedural assumptions which may serve as obstacles to successful basic research. No social research can pretend to be purely objective; no social research is free of some form of reactivity; the conduct of social research never needs to be contingent upon measurable outcomes.
