Chapter 2: Framing Participatory Evaluation

This chapter sets out the conceptual framework that we will use to organize our thinking about participatory evaluation. Much of this thinking was originally published by Cousins and Whitmore (1998) in a volume of New Directions for Evaluation devoted to participatory evaluation. We first identify a wide ranging sample of forms of collaborative inquiry (research and evaluation) as a backdrop to participatory evaluation. We then consider rationales and justifications for collaborative inquiry and, subsequently, dimensions of form or process, part and parcel of the Cousins and Whitmore (1998) two-part framework. This leads to a discussion of what Cousins and Whitmore delineated as two streams of participatory evaluation practice: a practical, problem-solving orientation and a transformative orientation.