Transforming Knowledge into Change

Looking Through the Right End of the Telescope

An evolving dialogue has emerged over the past few years between advocates, evaluation professionals, and funders concerned with evaluating advocacy. An earlier focus on questions regarding whether it is possible to evaluate advocacy has given rise more recently to a concern with producing innovations aimed at responding to the real and perceived unique challenges to evaluating advocacy.

The authors argue that the focus on new tools and approaches as part of this ongoing dialogue may be overstated. When considered from a perspective of how advocacy can best be served by evaluation, the authors argue that a disproportionate focus on tools can cause other important issues to be overlooked—in the context that not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured. Vigilance to the risks of overemphasis on tools, and understanding their limits, improves the chances of developing new—and using existing—tools or models in a way that helps support more effective advocacy.

 

Bibliographic Details
Author Jim Coe & Rhonda Schlangen
Publisher Center for Evaluation Innovation
Publication Date June 1, 2011
Publication City Washington, DC
Publication Work
Resource Type
Resource Focus
Audience
Region
Keywords
Submitted to Point K January 22, 2013 - 4:22pm


Download

pdf icon Telescope_Coe_Schlangen.pdf
102.56 KB
Get Adobe Reader
Login to review this resource