Evaluation: An Integrated Framework for Understanding, Guiding, and Improving Policies and Programs

"This is one of the most coherent and comprehensive theories of evaluation yet formulated and one that makes a most valuable contribution. The authors are pioneering in important new directions."
—Ernest R. House, author of Professional Evaluation and Evaluating with Validity

"Evaluators of many theoretical and practical persuasions can find a comfortable place for themselves within the big tent that is evaluation as assisted sensemaking. And, they need not worry that the tent will collapse. This tent has been constructed of sturdy materials, from a design that interweaves innovation with tradition, by builders with vision, talent, and commitment."
—Jennifer C. Greene, professor, educational psychology, University of Illinois

"This volume is essential reading for every evaluator and evaluation user, and would make an outstanding, readable, and provocative text for an evaluation method or strategies course. The book accomplishes the near impossible of presenting concrete, specific evaluation methods and tools while at the same time integrating them into a coherent, credible philosophical framework. I predict this volume will immediately become the 'thought leader' in the first decade of this new millennium, articulating the new consensus in evaluation perspectives."
—William Trochim, professor, Department of Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University

"This book is the best I've ever read detailing a practical theory of evaluation. It is comprehensive, beautifully written, and makes sense of the evaluation enterprise. It does so by emphasizing the major function of evaluation as sense-making about policies and programs."
—Thomas D. Cook, professor, sociology, psychology, education, and public policy, Northwestern University