The Role of the Evaluator: A Contingency Approach

The starting point of this article is the problem facing the evaluator of how to make the research findings useful to those involved in the process being evaluated. Underlying this problem is the basic assumption that, as Carol Weiss says, “Basically evaluation research is concerned with finding out how well action programmes work”, and that this is related to a second assumption that such findings should be of use to those involved in making decisions about the programme.