Discuss some of the reasons that evaluations are undertaken.

What will be an ideal response?

Evaluations are initiated for many reasons. They may be intended to help management improve a program; support advocacy by proponents or critics; gain knowledge about the program’s effects; provide input to decisions about the program’s funding, structure, or administration; or respond to political pressures. One of the first determinations the evaluator must make to identify the most relevant evaluation questions is the purpose of the evaluation. This is not always a simple matter. A statement of the purposes may accompany the request for an evaluation, but those announced purposes rarely tell the whole story and sometimes are only rhetorical. The evaluator often must dig deeper to determine who wants the evaluation, what they want and why they want it. There is no cut-and-dried method for doing this, but it is usually best to approach the task in a manner a journalist would dig out a story. The evaluator can examine source documents, interview key informants with different vantage points, and uncover pertinent history and background. Generally, the purposes of the evaluation will relate mainly to program improvement, accountability, or knowledge generation, but sometimes quite different motivations are in play.