Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice

The most current formulation of the ten principles of empowerment evaluation and tools for implementation are provided in this text. Case studies of community health initiatives, school district programs, and corporate programs aimed at bridging the digital divide are discussed.

David M. Fetterman, PhD, is president and CEO of Fetterman and Associates, an international evaluation consulting firm, and the founder of empowerment evaluation. Dr. Fetterman has worked in more than 17 countries--in South African townships and Native American reservations, as well as in Silicon Valley tech firms, including Google and Hewlett-Packard--and has 25 years of experience at Stanford University, serving as a School of Education faculty member, the School of Medicine director of evaluation, and a senior member of the University administration. He currently serves as a faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute and Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Fetterman is past president of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and the Council on Anthropology and Education of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He is a recipient of honors including the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Evaluation Theory Award and the Alva and Gunnar Myrdal Evaluation Practice Award from the AEA; the President's Award from the AAA; the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Research on Evaluation Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association; and the Award for Excellence in Research from the Mensa Foundation. He is the author or editor of numerous books.
Abraham Wandersman is Professor of Psychology at the University of South Carolina/n-/Columbia and was interim Co-Director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Wandersman performs research and program evaluation on citizen participation in community organizations and coalitions and on interagency collaboration. He is currently co-principal investigator on a participatory research study of an empowerment evaluation system, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and is working on a project for the program implementation and dissemination branch of the CDC center for injury prevention to facilitate a process and develop a framework on "how to bring what has been shown to work in child maltreatment prevention and youth violence prevention into more widespread practice." Dr. Wandersman is a coeditor of Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-Assessment and Accountability, and has authored or edited many other books and articles. In 1998, he received the Myrdal Award for Cumulative Contributions to Evaluation Practice from the American Evaluation Association. In 2000, he was elected President of Division 27 of the American Psychological Association (Community Psychology): The Society for Community Research and Action.

"This is an emancipating 21st-century book that provides an exciting venue for assessing outcomes of service learning. Its evidence-based conceptual model defines the role of the evaluator in concert with community enhancement and program achievement. This book is ideal for educating health care professionals and students engaged in service learning, as well as community stakeholders. It has great potential as a text for undergraduate and graduate students. I would consider this book for both professional and course use."--May L. Wykle, PhD, RN, FAAN, Dean and Cellar Professor of Nursing, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University "Empowerment evaluation signals the end of the days when evaluation was done in isolation of staff members and program participants. The 'new age' of evaluation enables groups to achieve programmatic goals by putting the power in the hands of those individuals who know their programs and have a stake in seeing the programs succeed. Fetterman and Wandersman give us the principles and the tools to build stronger communities through empowerment evaluation and to develop systems that incorporate evidence-based strategies. This text is easy to use and takes the reader from an overview of classic evaluation methods to the heart of empowerment for success. Thus, graduate students, novice evaluators, and experienced professionals can easily grasp the message and understand the process provided."--Shirley S. Travis, PhD, APRN, FAAN, Dean, College of Nursing and Health Science, George Mason University "Fetterman and Wandersman have made a wonderful contribution to evaluation theory and literature with this book. It's no accident that the 'in practice' part of the title is printed in red--that is the focus of this work. Beginning where the earlier text "Empowerment Evaluation" left off, this volume clarifies the 10 principles of empowerment evaluation and applies them to real-world settings in detailed caset