Deck 8: Empowerment Evaluation

Question 1

After reading the information provided in the chapter, please summarize the principles of empowerment evaluation.

Answer 1

The principles of empowerment evaluation are defining characteristics, and those practicing empowerment evaluation are encouraged to utilize evaluation methods that include as many principles as possible. These principles, and the practice of empowerment evaluation, will certainly be more attractive to some organizations than to others. By working with empowerment evaluators, the capacities of organizations to adopt and integrate the principles can be improved over time. The principles of empowerment evaluation include:
Community ownership: Empowerment evaluation places the primary responsibility and ownership for building the organization's evaluation capacity and evaluating the organization's strategies within the organization.
Inclusion: Empowerment evaluation involves the representation and participation of key stakeholders.
Democratic participation: Empowerment evaluation is a highly collaborative process. Every stakeholder's voice is to be heard and equally valued.
Community Knowledge: Empowerment evaluation values and promotes the knowledge present within an organization and community in which they work. Community stakeholders are considered to be in the best position to understand the community's problems and to generate solutions to those problems.
Evidence-based strategies: Empowerment evaluation promotes the use of evidence-based strategies so that organizations can use their resources to select, implement, and evaluate strategies that have a high likelihood of success.
Accountability: Empowerment evaluation focuses on data that can be used to inform continuous program improvement and to determine whether a strategy has achieved the desired outcomes.
Improvement: Empowerment evaluation helps organizations to improve their strategies so they are more likely to achieve their stated goals and outcomes.
Organizational learning: Empowerment evaluation fosters a culture of learning within organizations. Stakeholders come to view all data (positive and negative) as useful information to inform improvement in strategies.
Social Justice: Empowerment evaluation increases an organization's evaluation capacity to implement strategies that work to reduce health disparities that affect groups marginalized by discrimination, persecution, prejudice, and intolerance.
Capacity building: Empowerment evaluation builds individual and organizational evaluation capacity so that stakeholders are better able to conduct their own evaluations, understand the results, and use them to continuously improve their strategies.

Question 2

Explain the roles of the evaluator and possible partners within the empowerment evaluation partnership model.

Answer 2

The empowerment evaluation partnership model reflects an interactive and collaborative partnership, which includes the funder. The partnership involves the evaluator as a meaningful partner who contributes to the program's planning and monitoring as well as the documentation of its results. This collaboration allows for evaluators to share their perspectives and skills, adding value throughout the duration of the program and thereby increasing the likelihood of achieving results that can be attributed to the interventions. This collaborative partnership, consistent with the partnership-oriented emphasis of empowerment evaluation, is distinctly different from the traditional model of evaluation in which the evaluator is typically engaged in a separate function to assess a program after it has been implemented. The empowerment evaluation partnership model may be used even if the funder partner cannot be actively engaged. However, funders who participate in cycles of reflection are likely to be better prepared to understand and authorize real-time decisions regarding programmatic or budget changes. In addition, funders may be in a position to attract others to co-fund the program and may also assist in bringing the program to the attention of the media and public officials.
In the context of the empowerment evaluation partnership, the evaluator's role often includes the following:
informing the planning process by assessing the selection of evidence-based strategies or best practices;
adapting those selected strategies to the community and supporting implementation of strategies with fidelity;
identifying valid measurement tools and assisting in the development of data gathering practices;
fostering the monitoring of data collection to assist the process of continuous quality improvement or cycles of reflection and action; and/or
coaching the grantee on preparing credible progress and summary reports that can assist in securing future funding and institutionalizing the project.