Change

Social scientists have created a comprehensive body of theoretical knowledge about change. Havelock's seminal work includes a taxonomy of change models that provides a basis for ideological and political debates about how best to implement change in organizational settings.

These debates revolve around the locus of the change initiative. Proponents of the use of science evidence maintain that research-based knowledge should be the critical force in the development of rationally based social interventions. An alternative view, encapsulated in the community development movement, is based on the primacy of locally produced knowledge due to the perceived relevance of local conditions to decisions about effective interventions. A key element of the debate is about control: Who should control decisions—an external authority or those who are close to the action?

It is within this context that the role of evaluation on change must be considered. There are parallels between the evolution of evaluation practice and what has been discussed here. Although there was an emphasis in early evaluation practice on the use of evaluation to solve problems on a large scale if not on a national basis, there are now a large number of evaluators who work to support programs that are more localized and in the hands of the community.

Links between evaluation and change involve an acknowledgment that evaluation findings should affect individuals and organizations. Changes in individuals are often associated with learning, knowing, and understanding information about the program that was previously not known. With regard to the utilization of research and evaluation findings, this has been labeled as conceptual use. Achieving conceptual understanding of findings is now regarded as the minimum desired outcome in an evaluation study, and evaluators should employ strategies to achieve this outcome. In the context of policy research and evaluation, three phases of individual change have been identified.

Phase 1: Reception. Utilization takes place when policy makers receive policy-relevant information. When the communication comes to rest in the “in basket,” so that the findings reach the policy maker rather than remaining with the evaluator, reception has occurred.

Phase 2: Cognition. The policy maker must read, digest, and understand the findings for cognition to occur.

Phase 3: Reference. If frame of reference is the criterion, the evaluation findings must change the way the policy maker sees the world. If information changes her or his preferences or understandings, change is a reality. Altering frames of reference is important because, in the long run, the policy maker's new vision will emerge in new policy priorities.

This final phase points to a second level of change: the use of findings as a basis for action, which has been described as instrumental use. Examples of changes of an instrumental nature include developing a new program or modifying an existing one, clarifying an existing program plan or design, and refining the delivery of a program that is already being implemented.

Such changes imply an organizational perspective because programs are rarely the responsibilities of individuals acting outside an organizational context. It is likely that groups rather than individuals would be [Page 52]engaged in programmatic activities such as policy planning, developing program logic, and implementing new procedures that directly affect the clients concerned in the intervention.

...