THE DEBATE
The debate was lively and animated during the earliest stages in which empowerment evaluation was introducted to the field. Many colleages were like zealots, eager to support an approach that validated what they had been doing (albeit in many cases less systematically) for years. Others, however, we fearful that we might be giving evaluation away. Their fears were not unfounded. We were sharing the basics of evaluation with everyone, with the expectation that everyone can and should do some minimum level of evaluation, like reading, writing, and arithmetic. It would not invalidate the need for an evaluator. It would simply imply that the evaluator would work at a higher level, actually maximizing their own potential.
The presentations below are the often volatile discussions and debates that transpired during this early phase by some of the leading evaluation theorists at the time. The unique part of this presentation is that the critique is linked to the response at the time - a point counterpoint style or exchange often referred to as "The Debate" at the meetings.
Review Response Patton Fetterman Scriven Fetterman Sechrest Fetterman Stufflebeam Fetterman
A few excerpts are provided below to provide a insight into the tone and tenacity of the debate.
REVIEW RESPONSE Words mark decades.
Rock 'n roll in the fifties. Altered consciousness in the sixties. Paradigm shift in the seventies. Proactive in the eighties. Empowerment in the nineties.
It's what's happening now. Or what's not happening. Or what shouldn't happen, depending on your perspective and praxis. The bridge to the twenty-first century will be built with words. Some worry that that's all it will be built of.
Vanderplaat (1995), writing from a European perspective, locates empowerment evaluation in the larger context of emancipatory research that grew out of Freire's liberation pedagogy (1970), feminist inquiry (e.g., Harding, 1987; Maguire, 1987), critical theory (ref. Forester, 1985) and communicative action (Habermas, 1984, 1987). More directly related to evaluation, empowerment evaluation draws on and raises the stakes of participatory action research (Whyte, 1991; Wadsworth, 1993; King, 1995) and collaborative evaluation (Cousins & Earl, 1992, 1995). Fetterman, in the volume here under review, traces the roots of empowerment evaluation to community psychology, action anthropology, the school reform movement, and grassroots community development --influences reflecting his own professional and intellectual journey.
The phrase "empowerment evaluation" gained prominence in the lexicon of evaluation when Fetterman, as President of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), made it the theme of the Association's 1993 National Conference. The volume here under review grew out of that conference. Karen Kirkhart, President of AEA in 1994, provided an additional platform for discussing empowerment by choosing "Evaluation and Social Justice" as the theme for the national conference over which she presided. The importance of the idea of empowerment evaluation as a frontier of evaluation practice was further recognized by the profession when David Fetterman, in 1995, and Shakeh Kaftarian, in 1996, won the Alva and Gunnar Mydral Award for Evaluation Practice, and Margret Dugan, in 1995, won the Guttentag Award as a promising evaluator -- all authors in the volume under review and all recognized in part for their work and writings on empowerment evaluation.
This debate, which involves some of the most prominent colleagues in the field and appears in one of the evaluation field's primary journals, is symbolic of empowerment evaluation's impact. As I reflect on this phenomenon, I can only speculate that the attention this approach is receiving is in part a function of both the utility of empowerment evaluation and the powerful contrast it creates with many traditional approaches. Empowerment evaluation has many purposes and many contributions to make to evaluation; as another tool in the evaluator's toolbox; as a vehicle to influence and improve traditional forms of evaluation (by inviting much greater involvement and participation by program participants in evaluation); and as a mechanism to further clarify and expand our understanding of what evaluation is.
I am appreciative (although somewhat surprised) by the level and type of discourse this approach has generated and the attention it has received. This kind of engagement can only improve and refine both empowerment evaluation and evaluation in general. I appreciate and commend Blaine Worthen, the editor, for orchestrating a professional exchange that is helping us to re-examine the field of evaluation itself. He has created an environment conducive to scholarly debate and inquiry and thus facilitated both a discussion about empowerment evaluation as an approach and its role as a catalyst for a much larger discussion about the purpose(s) of evaluation.
Patton shared his manuscript with me before publication, and I provided a long list of corrections and suggestions. He incorporated these, as deemed appropriate, to refine his argument in some instances and strengthen it in others. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to create a more focused exchange. This back-and-forth process allows us to focus our attention on crystallized and improved arguments, rather than on errors and omissions. This initial exchange has also set the stage for further dissemination of contrasting views from Scriven and from me, in an effort to improve practice. In response to my request for permission to place his critique on the Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation TIG home page (http://wwwleland.stanford.edu/~davidf/empowermentevaluation.html), Scriven responded, "...sure, post it and congratulations for doing so: it's in the best spirit of evaluation (not to mention science)!" Immediately afterward, he offered to cross-link my response to the Internet homepage he is developing. I think our prepublication exchanges and our commitment to open debate and sharing of information provide a model that we should work to maintain, refine, and improve in our scholastic community.
Patton's and Scriven's comments provide valuable contributions to the development of empowerment evaluation. Their discussions should be mined for every ounce of insight to build and refine this approach. Embracing critique is in the true spirit of a self-reflective and growing evaluative community of learners.
The anthology I was asked to review is the volume on empowerment evaluation edited by Fetterman, Kaftarian, and Wandersman (1996). It provides a good sampling of current work in the area, with 16 essays, the first and last by Fetterman, the rest by a varied collection of contributors, including the distinguished academic activist Henry Levin and many from the firing line of community change projects and funding. Although there is much in this volume that deserves a detailed review, Michael Patton has undertaken that task in a companion piece in this issue, and another chapter by chapter analysis is likely to be redundant. The most important task for a critique from an alternative viewpoint is to focus on the forest rather than the trees, so the discussion here will mainly deal with the overall effort made in this volume to clarify and justify empowerment evaluation, particularly in Fetterman's contributions. I will only make reference to a couple of the chapters that are of particular relevance to the general issues. What began as a book review has thus been somewhat enlarged in scope to become a review and critique of a movement that is now an important part of the evaluation scene.
See Response to Patton. Fetterman combined his response to both of them.
Sechrest's review begins on a positive note:
This book, Empowerment Evaluation, is of considerable merit. It is replete with excellent ideas about evaluation that should be of interest to, and taken seriously by, almost any program evaluator. (Sechrest, p. 422).
However, it would be misleading to suggest that Sechrest is enamored by this approach. On the same page he writes:
Make no mistake about it -- empowerment evaluation is a movement, not simply an approach or strategy. It is frankly ideological: Several chapters refer specifically to the disadvantaged as the focus of concern for empowerment, and Mithaug's chapter, "Fairness, Liberty, and Empowerment Evaluation," is an attempt to provide a philosophical justification for it. (Sechrest, p. 422).
By way of background for the reader and preface to this response, Sechrest and I have been colleagues for many years. We have served on evaluation boards together and engaged in public dialogue and dispute (see Sechrest, 1991, and then Fetterman, 1992). We have also published together, highlighting the synergy associated with integrating qualitative and quantitative methods (Denis, Fetterman, & Sechrest, 1994). We are familiar with each other's style and approach, and respectful enough to weather our methodological and theoretical disagreements.
In this vein, I'd like to start out by thanking the reviewer for stating that Empowerment Evaluation (Fetterman, Kaftarian, & Wandersman, 1996) is of considerable merit and is "replete with excellent ideas about evaluation that should be of interest to, and taken seriously by, almost any program evaluator." I particularly appreciate the statement that "Any reasonably thoughtful evaluator of whatever persuasion who reads Empowerment Evaluation will come away from it with increased awareness of the need to get program recipients directly involved in program planning and evaluation." If this message was clear even to critics of this process, I consider the work to be successful.
Numerous errors and misperceptions in Sechrest's (1997) review, however, need to be corrected to inform a meaningful scholarly inquiry and dialogue. This discussion highlights a few of these errors, in some cases providing verbatim quotations from the book as documentation (Fetterman, p. 427).
INTRODUCTION
Some recent popular conceptualizations of program evaluation are inadequate philosophically, theoretically, and practically, and are potentially counterproductive. Nevertheless, evaluation innovators can help advance the theory and practice of evaluation even when they set forth confused or wrong proposals.
MYTHS AND MISPERCEPTIONS
Any innovative approach -- no matter how widespread -- is subject to misperception and misrepresentation. Empowerment evaluation is no exception, as evidenced by Dr. Stufflebeam's recent article "Empowerment Evaluation, Objectivist Evaluation, and Evaluation Standards: Where the Future of Evaluation Should Not Go and Where It Needs to Go", appearing in this journal (1994). But such myths and distortions arise from distance and lack of information. Often, we project our worst fears and insecurities onto those whose behaviors and customs we do not understand. I remember the surprise and relief of workshop participants in a midwest state years ago, when after meeting me and my family, they found that Jews did not have horns. Contact and interaction can dispel such misunderstandings and myths, which otherwise create a gulf between us and understanding. This article and several forthcoming works may serve to assure Dr. Stufflebeam that empowerment evaluation has no horns and poses no threat to the discipline of evaluation. Indeed, this new approach may serve to revitalize the field with new perspective and a broader scope of application.