Empowerment Evaluation

Empowerment evaluation involves the use of evaluation concepts, techniques, and findings to foster improvement and self-determination within a program or organization. In 2005, Abraham Wandersman and colleagues described it as an approach that “aims to increase the likelihood that programs will achieve results by increasing the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs” (p. 27). In essence, empowerment evaluation is a tool to help people produce desired outcomes and reach their goals. This entry discusses the conceptual building blocks of empowerment evaluation and the role of empowerment evaluators.