Empowerment Evaluation in the Digital Villages analyzes a $15 million community change initiative designed to bridge the digital divide in East Palo Alto, East Baltimore, and San Diego. Involving a partnership between Hewlett-Packard, Stanford University, and three ethnically diverse communities, this initiative enabled its constituencies to build their own technology-oriented businesses, improve their education systems, and improve their economic health. While examining this large-scale, multi-site case, Fetterman highlights the potential for empowerment evaluation to build local capacity and sustain improvements within communities. He provides deep insights into key steps in empowerment evaluation by exploring the way that each of these phases took place in the digital villages. Additionally, the text provides evaluators with real-world stories and practical advice from the front lines. The Digital Village case also demonstrates the social value of combining corporate philanthropy, academic prowess, and community empowerment—highlighting the role of evaluation in this process.

This volume is devoted to the theme of social responsibility, social justice, and evaluation. It examines the evaluation–social justice interface and: shares a variety of options and examples from different settings, gives voice to populations whose voices are rarely heard, and contributes to fulfilling the potential of the significant role evaluation can have in promoting social change. First discussing issues related to evaluation, social responsibility, social justice, and marginalized populations in general, it goes on to address issues concerning populations marginalized due to health, psychological, and physical difficulties; their cultural or ethnic/national status; or the specific geopolitical context of Israel. This is the 146th issue in the New Directions for Evaluation series from Jossey-Bass. It is an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.

From the founder of empowerment evaluation (EE), a framework uniquely suited to advancing social justice causes, this book explains the theories, principles, and steps of conducting EE from scratch or within a preexisting evaluation or work plan. David M. Fetterman describes how EE enables program planners and participants to define their mission or purpose, take stock of how well they are doing, and plan for the future to achieve self-determined goals. EEs of two large programs (Feeding America and USAID/REACH) are discussed in depth; other EE case examples address such topics as raising test scores in impoverished and rural schools and bridging the digital divide in communities of color. User-friendly features include chapters on conducting EE remotely and frequently asked questions, illuminating sidebars, and glossaries of acronyms and concepts/terms.

Governments and organizations of all shapes and sizes espouse values of equity and social justice. Yet, there are many examples of unfair social arrangements and employment conditions, dysfunctional government practices, and growing income inequality in both developed and developing countries worldwide. The profession and transdiscipline of evaluation is well equipped to address issues of inequality and social injustice, but until recently has been much more focused on primary stakeholder and donor satisfaction (being as useful as possible to funders of interventions and evaluations) and accountability concerns. The authors in this volume challenge the field of evaluation to become more concerned about using evaluation to develop more equitable organizations, governments, and societies. Leading evaluation theorists and practitioners including Michael Scriven, Jennifer Greene, Thomas Schwandt, Emily Gates, Sandra Mathison, Karen Kirkhart, Saville Kushner, Lois-Ellin Datta, Ernest House, Robert Stake, Patricia Rogers, Robert Picciotto and Stewart Donaldson, provide a range of visions for how evaluation can play a much larger role in facilitating social justice across the globe. Evaluation for an Equitable Society will be of great interest to evaluation practitioners, students and scholars. It will be of interest to those teaching and taking introductory evaluation courses, as well as advanced courses focused on improving evaluation theory and practice.

Practical Program Evaluation for Criminal Justice shows readers how to apply the principles of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and evidence-based practice to criminal justice reform plans. Unlike other policy-based texts, which tend to focus more on implementation than assessment, this book provides applicable, step-by-step instruction on determining an initiative's necessity prior to its adoption (reducing the risk of wasting resources), as well as how to accurately gauge its effectiveness during initial roll-out stages. The book gradually introduces basic data analysis procedures and statistical techniques, which, once mastered, can be used to prove or disprove a program's worth. Lastly, the book introduces the types of stakeholders who should review evaluation results for quick action, as well as how to best structure reports to ensure their buy-in. Individually examines every major evaluation type (as well as the benefits, concerns, and constraints of each), including needs, theory, process, outcome/impact, and cost efficiency Defines the precise data points each evaluation type requires, and the exact manner in which this data can be collected Demonstrates how different types of evaluations can be used together to provide clear information regarding a program's overall performance level Cites and makes use of real-world policy evaluations and vetted programs