Inclusiveness and Social Justice in Evaluation: An Evaluability Assessment

Abstract

Kenya is a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse society that has witnessed conflicts arising from this ethnic and cultural diversity. The country’s politics is tainted with ethnic sentiments and politically induced disharmony. This paper used evaluability assessment to determine whether two issues identified in the Kenyan Cohesion and Integration Policy as threats to building a unified nation are evaluable, feasible and of use to achieve the policy’s objectives. The feasibility study, better known as an evaluability assessment, confirms that these two issues can be evaluated and can help policymakers and practitioners to achieve the country’s dream of building one cohesive nation that is proud of its diversity. Based on the discussion in this paper, it is advised that Kenya uses the evaluability assessment to provide short-and long-term outcomes that might be examined to measure efficacy and save superfluous or poorly conceived full-scale evaluations. The evaluability assessment method could be used in other, well-established programs related to the Kenya National and Integration Policy with a variety of stakeholders to foster new thinking and the potential for more focused and effective evaluations, even though there may be variations between programs and it is still unclear how generalisable these results may be. The next step would be to continue with an evaluation based on the results of this evaluability assessment and to continue refining the logic model with input from the participants.