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Notes warrants unconvincing” (Fournier and Smith, 1993). Some reasons for this situation may be
the failure of the evaluator to establish a set of shared aims with the evaluand, or creating
overly ambitious aims, as well as failing to compromise and incorporate the cultural differences
of individuals and programs within the evaluation aims and process.
None of these problems are due to a lack of a definition of evaluation but are rather due to
evaluators attempting to impose predisposed notions and definitions of evaluations on clients.
The central reason for the poor utilization of evaluations is arguably due to the lack of tailoring
of evaluations to suit the needs of the client, due to a predefined idea (or definition) of what
an evaluation is rather than what the client needs are (House, 1980).

Standards
Depending on the topic of interest, there are professional groups which look to the quality and
rigor of the evaluation process.
The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation has developed standards for
program, personnel, and student evaluation. The Joint Committee standards are broken into
four sections: Utility, Feasibility, Propriety, and Accuracy. Various European institutions have
also prepared their own standards, more or less related to those produced by the Joint Committee.
They provide guidelines about basing value judgments on systematic inquiry, evaluator competence
and integrity, respect for people, and regard for the general and public welfare.
The American Evaluation Association has created a set of Guiding Principles for evaluators.
The order of these principles does not imply priority among them; priority will vary by
situation and evaluator role. The principles run as follows:
• Systematic Inquiry: Evaluators conduct systematic, data-based inquiries about whatever
is being evaluated.
• Competence: Evaluators provide competent performance to stakeholders.

• Integrity / Honesty: Evaluators ensure the honesty and integrity of the entire evaluation
process.
• Respect for People: Evaluators respect the security, dignity and self-worth of the respondents,
program participants,clients, and other stakeholders with whom they interact.
• Responsibilities for General and Public Welfare: Evaluators articulate and take into account
the diversity of interestsand values that may be related to the general and public welfare.
Furthermore, the international organizations such as the I.M.F. and the World Bank have
independent evaluation functions. The various funds, programmes, and agencies of the United
Nations has a mix of independent, semi-independent and self-evaluation functions, which
have organized themselves as a system-wide UN Evaluation Group (UNEG), that works together
to strengthen the function, and to establish UN norms and standards for evaluation. There is
also an evaluation group within the OECD-DAC, which endeavors to improve development
evaluation standards.

Task What do you mean by evaluation and effectiveness?

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