COLLABORATIVE EVALUATION IN NORTH-AMERICA - EVALUATORS SELF-REPORTED OPINIONS, PRACTICES AND CONSEQUENCES

Despite growing theoretical interest in collaborative and participator y forms of evaluation, little is known about evaluators' perceptions a bout such evaluation practices or their views about its viability. Thi s article reports results from a survey of Canadian and American evalu ators concerning such perceptions. Five-hundred and sixty-four evaluat ors responded to questions about their views and opinions of collabora tive evaluation and a subsample of 348 (61.7%) also described a specif ic collaborative evaluation project in which they had recently partici pated. The survey results suggested that evaluators support a utilizat ion-focused, stakeholder-service orientation to the role and believe t hat the evaluator has a primary responsibility of maximizing intended use for intended users. Reported practices suggest that most evaluator s engaged in collaborative activities that resemble the conventional s takeholder-based evaluation approach. These data are neither able to, nor are they intended to support one side or the other in the professi onal debate about whether evaluators ought to embrace collaborative ev aluation as a legitimate direction within the profession. Rather, they add to the empirical knowledge base concerning this type of evaluatio n.