The social context of water quality improvement evaluation

Abstract

AbstractThe complexity of physical and social contexts for water resource management presents considerable problems for designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions for water quality and quantity problems. Water resource management is increasingly being conducted on a watershed scale, where watersheds are areas of land that drain into the same water body. Deborah Rog's model of context‐sensitive evaluation provides a framework for understanding and addressing the complexity of watersheds and watershed management, restoration, and protection. This chapter discusses the problems inherent in evaluating watershed projects. It presents three overarching considerations for evaluating these types of projects: diversity of stakeholder groups, complexity of identifying and measuring outcomes, and evaluation ethos. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for specifically evaluating the social dimensions of watershed projects and provides an example of a water quality evaluation that addresses regional social indicators. Rog's five areas of context are described in this example. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.