This text provides an introduction to the theory and practice of internal evaluation. It presents the stages of internal evaluation growth, ways of identifying users' needs and selecting appropriate evaluation methods.

Today rapidly changing organizations need the best tools for driving high performance, meeting customer needs, measuring outcomes and improving service delivery. This book shows how to effectively use internal evaluation to determine a business or program's effectiveness, efficiency, economy and performance. It combines theory with the author's extensive experience to provide an indispensable resource for novice internal evaluators, experienced evaluation professionals and for managers responsible for evaluating their own programs.

This book highlights practitioners in different industries and organizations who provide theoretical and practical examples of their work in promoting and conducting internal evaluation.

Focused on the interpersonal aspects of internal evaluation in non-profit organisations, this book presents practice-based discussions centred on six key topics identified through the authors’ experience as evaluation practitioners. Internal Evaluation in Non-Profit Organisations: Practitioner Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice is not a step-by-step how-to guide; instead, each chapter unpacks an aspect of internal evaluation in non-profits that is paid insufficient heed in the existing literature. Written by and for internal evaluation practitioners, the book contains a plethora of practical strategies and critical analysis of thought-provoking topics that are of particular interest and importance to internal evaluators in non-profit settings. The authors understand the pressures facing practitioners and non-profit organisations and share their insights around improving evaluation’s ability to be efficient, embedded, useful, and meaningful. This book will be of interest to researchers, scholars, and students focusing on non-profit management and will hold specific value for internal evaluators who want to harness their unique and influential position to help organisations achieve their goals. Further, this book is ideal for individuals wanting to think critically about evaluation and improve evaluation utilisation by developing their professional capability, building teamwork skills, using informal everyday data, incorporating theory, and developing fruitful relationships with external evaluators.

Evaluation is a controversial and little-understood strategy of public governance, control, and decision making. As early as classical antiquity, scholars were summoned to court to counsel kings. Public policy and program evaluation is a recent addition to the great chain of attempts to use the brainpower of scholars and scientists to further the interests of the state. Evaluation scholars are asked to provide retrospective assessments of the implementation, output, and outcome of government measures in order to effect deeper understanding and well-grounded decisions on the part of those in charge of government operations. Evaluation is the process of distinguishing the worthwhile from the worthless, the precious from the useless; evaluation implies looking backward in order to be able to steer forward better. Written from a political science perspective, Public Policy and Program Evaluation provides an overview of the possibilities and limits of public sector evaluation. Evert Vedung examines evaluation as a mechanism for monitoring, systematizing, and grading government activities and their results so that public officials, in their future-oriented work, will be able to act as responsibly, creatively, and efficiently as possible. Topics discussed include: "Evaluation, Rationality, and Theories of Public Management"; "Models of Evaluation"; "Internal or External Evaluation"; "Impact Assessment as Tryout and Social Experimentation"; "Process Evaluation and Implementation Theory"; "The Eight-Problems Approach to Evaluation"; and "Uses and Users of Evaluation." All evaluation rests upon the idea that perceptions, opinions, intentions, judgments—in short, everything concerned with the world of human consciousness—play such interesting roles in political and administrative action that their functions are worth investigating. Through experience, humans may learn from past actions. The interventions of the modern state are so extensive, their execu

"Focused on the interpersonal aspects of internal evaluation in non-profit organisations, this book presents practice-based discussions centred on six key topics identified through the authors' experience as evaluation practitioners. Internal Evaluation in Non-Profit Organisations: Practitioner Perspectives on Theory, Research, and Practice is not a step-by-step how to guide; instead, each chapter unpacks an aspect of internal evaluation in non-profits that is paid insufficient heed in the existing literature. Written by and for internal evaluation practitioners, the book contains a plethora of practical strategies and critical analysis of thought-provoking topics that are of particular interest and importance to internal evaluators in non-profit settings. The authors understand the pressures facing practitioners and non-profit organisations and share their insights around improving evaluation's ability to be efficient, embedded, useful, and meaningful. This book will be of interest to researchers, scholars and students focusing on non-profit management and will hold specific value for internal evaluators who want to harness their unique and influential position to help organisations achieve their goals. Further, this book is ideal for individuals wanting to think critically about evaluation and improve evaluation utilisation by developing their professional capability, building teamwork skills, using informal everyday data, incorporating theory, and developing fruitful relationships with external evaluators"--

The Encyclopedia of Evaluation is an authoritative, first-of-its-kind who, what, where, why, and how of the field of evaluation. Covering professional practice as well as academia, this volume chronicles the development of the field—its history, key figures, theories, approaches, and goals. From the leading publisher in the field of evaluation, this work is a must-have for all social science libraries, departments that offer courses in evaluation, and students and professional evaluators around the world. The entries in this Encyclopedia capture the essence of evaluation as a practice (methods, techniques, roles, people), as a profession (professional obligations, shared knowledge, ethical imperatives, events, places) and as a discipline (theories and models of evaluation, ontological and epistemological issues).