Participatory Evaluation

Guiding Principles

The guiding principles of participatory evaluation include

• collective problem, need, and resource identification and shared decision making;
• equity and inclusivity, especially of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups, in the design, implementation, and analysis of data;
• democratic collaboration and engagement that create the conditions for people to be agentic and empower themselves;
• transparency and accountability in decision-making and evaluation processes based on transparent criteria;
• multiple stakeholder consultation to develop the process and then guide all choices;
• coconstruction of knowledge and learning that positions stakeholders as sharers of knowledge and active teachers and learners;
• [Page 1217]responsive design and process adaptability that allow for methodologies to align with the context, resources present, and skills of the research team participants;
• diversity-oriented process that engenders engagement with a diverse group of stakeholders and participants;
• nonimpositional, bottom-up approach that actively resists power asymmetry and hegemony;
• people-centered approach to evaluation that focuses on participants’ lived realities, experiences, resources, and needs;
• local knowledge construction that attends to the range and variation of “locals,” that is, the array of diverse individuals and groups that exist in any context and, further, that does not essentialize members of communities or organizations; and
• focus on the development of effective communication pathways that include the development of critical dialogue and conflict resolution skills.

Differences From Conventional Evaluation

Participatory evaluation is a specific form of and approach to evaluation that differs from conventional evaluation approaches in significant ways, including that participatory evaluation

• views stakeholders and participants as experts of their own experiences, collaborators, partners, and cocreators of knowledge and understanding (rather than as passive recipients or learners);
• creates the conditions in which stakeholders are encouraged and supported to participate throughout each stage of the evaluation process;
• helps create the conditions for participants to build ownership and contribute to the sustainability of the project even after the funders or development partners have exited;
• creates the conditions in which participants can act as watchdogs, thereby creating more accountability for effectiveness and assessment;
• creates the conditions in which communities and stakeholders who are vulnerable, marginalized, and/or underserved become active, agentic participants;
• is a process through which stakeholder–researchers can build the skills and capacities they identify as necessary for their own development;
• provides a fuller, more contextualized understanding of any system, organization, policy, or program through formally engaging and triangulating multiple perspectives; and
• builds social capital and strengthens the initiative, policy, or program in focus through bonding and bridging a range of stakeholder groups.

Participatory evaluation requires collective identification of core issues, evaluation constructs, scope and terms of the evaluation, as well as criteria for assessment. These elements result in the development of clear and contextually relevant indicators, which are crucial to assess the performance of a program or policy. The indicators, which are what the evaluation is measured against, are developed through a collaborative consultative process in which the participants, representing multiple stakeholder groups such as beneficiaries (e.g., students and/or teachers), implementers (e.g., teachers and/or school leaders), and partners (e.g., funders and/or national-level policy leaders) identify needs, goals, objectives, outputs, and outcomes according to specific, well-articulated criteria. Participatory evaluation must be rigorous, informed by the host communities or institutions, as well as by the guiding goals and objectives of the programs or policies in focus. This helps to create a textured, robust, and well-informed framework and theory of action that can stand the test of time and resist external pressures or influences that might alter or interrupt contextually relevant learnings and authentic evaluation/program outcomes. Thus, a layer of accountability is built into participatory evaluation because many people who have a real stake are involved from the beginning.

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