Everyday Evaluation on the Run

Effective evaluation can provide valuable insights into the way a program, a course or an organisation is being run, and direction for improvement. This widely used introduction to evaluation is intended for non-specialists in the human services who need to do evaluation as part of a busy workload. Everyday Evaluation on the Run offers a practical overview of the main approaches to evaluation, strategies for involving stakeholders, and the evaluation industry's toolbox of models and techniques. The author emphasises the core principles and concepts of evaluation, and the idea of building a culture of evaluation. This fourth edition of Everyday Evaluation on the Run reflects current thinking on values in organisations and the need to use evaluation to guide future practice rather than just as an auditing process. With extensive examples, it is a handy reference for professionals and students in health, welfare, and community work, and in government and non-profit agencies. All three of Yoland Wadsworth's best-selling books have been brought together in this Routledge trilogy to offer for the first time a coherent body of work addressing the pressing needs of people to 'inquire their way' to the future.

Yoland Wadsworth is a pathbreaker in research methodology and its use in evaluation in health, community and human services for over forty years. She has been an evaluator and evaluation consultant and facilitator in community-based non-government organisations and self-help groups, and for state, federal and local governments; Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, Principal Fellow in the McCaughey VicHealth Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing, University of Melbourne, and deputy to the Director of the Policy & Research Branch in Premier & Cabinet, Victorian government. She is a Fellow and Life Member of the Australian Evaluation Society. She is also author of the best-selling Do It Yourself Social Research and culminating magnum opus, Human Inquiry for Living Systems: Building in Research and Evaluation for Life.

1. Introduction 2. A Conceptual Framework 3. Two Approaches to Evaluation 4. Doing Evaluation 5. The Evaluation Industry's Toolbox 6. Some Reading