Evaluation Pragmatics

Abstract

Evaluation is certainly based on social research, but each social research method and technique has its own limits and generates its own specific biases. This issue becomes critical at a fundamental evaluation point: the moment when one is required both to define the subject and mandate, and formulate the ‘evaluative questions’ which guide the whole activity. In this phase, it is important to look at every evaluation as a local issue, leaving the subject's definition to the (anthropological, organizational, professional) context, its grammar and lexicon. To be useful, an evaluation must focus on the context, i.e. on the ‘texts’ produced by the stakeholders and the meanings they give to these texts, thus helping them to contextually reduce evaluand ambiguity. In this perspective, evaluation is a learning organization's tool that helps to build social reality. Such a tool has its own mechanism, which is recognized by the stakeholders and makes possible both the intervention and the success of the programme.