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Evaluative Inquiry

Evaluative inquiry (EI) combines the notions of investigation and evaluation to promote evaluation that is ongoing and embedded in routine practice. EI values both the processes and the outcomes of evaluation and therefore is juxtaposed with a view of evaluation that is episodic and oriented to specific points in time or specific decision-making needs. The development of EI parallels the focus on learning in organizations in the work of Peter Senge, Donald Schön and Chris Argyris beginning in the 1980s and into the 1990s. Evaluators attuned to organizational and human resource development saw the potential for evaluation practice to support individual and organizational learning through systemic and systematic inquiry built into routine organizational operations.

EI overlaps substantially with action research, particularly as it is done within organizational contexts. Both forms of inquiry employ an ongoing, iterative process or a spiral metaphor, and both seek positive change through examination of data and reflection on those data. Perhaps a key difference is that action research builds on a plan of action, while EI builds on a plan of inquiry about an evaluand, which results in a plan of action. Evaluative inquiry might therefore be a strategy that supports action research's stages of reflection and planning.

What follows is a description of evaluative inquiry: the process of evaluative inquiry, evaluative inquiry's basic characteristics and an example to illustrate more concretely what evaluative inquiry looks like. The discussion will conclude by illustrating how evaluative inquiry is particularly important in organizational contexts.

Evaluative Inquiry Process

Evaluative inquiry typically proceeds in three phases: focusing, investigating and applying what is learned. The first phase is focusing the inquiry, a phase in which a team or committee determines what the evaluation will focus on, determines who the stakeholders are and defines the most important evaluation questions. In the focusing phase, evaluation teams might make use of a wide range of strategies to create this focus, including the development of logic models, interviewing stakeholders to determine what the relevant issues are and using Q sorts or Delphi techniques.

The second phase of evaluative inquiry is doing the investigation or collecting the data and evidence to answer the evaluation questions posed in the first phase. The third phase, and the phase that most especially distinguishes evaluative inquiry, is applying what is learned from the evaluation. Many evaluations end with the delivery of a final report to decision-makers, but evaluative inquiry through continued engagement of an in-house evaluation team, and perhaps others within the organization, is committed to using the evaluation findings to (a) strategize about the findings, (b) develop action plans based on the process and findings and (c) monitor actions.

Characteristics of Evaluative Inquiry

Evaluative inquiry combines the fundamental purpose of evaluation (judging the merit, worth or value of something) with the idea of inquiry in a particular way. This approach is characterized by a number of features that may not be extant in every evaluation approach (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 Features of Evaluative Inquiry

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