Investigating Equity and Social Justice within Programs: A Framework of Evaluative Criteria

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Background: Evaluators have a professional and ethical responsibility to contribute to the “advancement of an equitable and just society.” A rich body of scholarship provides guidance about how evaluators can do so through social justice–oriented and decolonizing evaluation approaches, culturally responsive methods, attending to power and privilege in program and evaluation contexts, and partnering with communities. In this article, we provide guidance for examining how the program being evaluated attends to issues of equity and social justice. Purpose: We present a framework for investigating equity and social justice within programs through the criteria that evaluations pursue. The framework is offered as a map of possibilities and a thinking tool to help evaluators surface, examine, and negotiate varying values and design evaluative lines of inquiry to address them. Setting: We write as evaluation faculty in colleges of education. We approached the framework through the lens of our shared commitment to advancing equity and social justice in evaluation practice. We aimed to bring together our differing areas of expertise and lived experiences to develop a resource to support evaluators in advancing equity and social justice. Data Collection and Analysis: Our work builds on a previously published model of criteria domains. Each domain reflects a broad category of program characteristics or results that can be deemed important or desirable for a given program and context. Here, we refine and expand the model by applying an equity and social justice lens to 11 different criteria domains. We draw on the social justice–oriented evaluation literature for guidance and examples about how evaluators can advance equity and social justice within each domain and associated lines of inquiry. Findings: The framework outlines 11 criteria domains in which a program’s contribution to equity and social justice might be examined. We describe each domain and apply it to an example evaluation to illustrate. We conclude by discussing the use of the framework to advance equity and social justice through evaluation practice, education, and scholarship.