Chapter 5: The Place of Evaluation

Abstract

SUMMARY There have been many competent evaluations of youth civic engagement projects. Our work differs from those in assumptions, purposes, goals, methods, activities, and findings for use in evaluation capacity building and program improvement, theoretical and conceptual clarity, and decision-making. Typically, evaluations have focused on predetermined project outcomes on the level of individual students. We looked at emergent changes in young people's orientations to and competence in civic engagement and did so on the level of the small working group. Others implicitly saw evaluation as a science or craft based in the social sciences. This latter we agree with, but add that evaluation for us is political, bringing together interests, power, and meaning with potentially real consequences for young people and projects. We tried to practice evaluation democratically by involving young people in all aspects of the studies over the five years. We advocated evaluation capacity building by training some adult and youth participants in evaluation and its uses. We believe that in these ways, our evaluation approach gained scientific validity, political legitimacy, and proved useful, if not always used by its sponsors.