Empowerment evaluation: theoretical and methodological considerations

This article presents a theoretical framework of empowerment evaluation, addresses methodological issues and suggests operational considerations for evaluators who wish to implement empowerment evaluation. The discussion of these issues reflects the author's experience in facilitating evaluations of human service programs so as to maximize participation by the users. The roots of empowerment evaluation extend to participation theory with the premise that the more participation in decision-making processes the participants have, the likelier they become to commit to and invest in the decisions. Empowerment evaluation provides evaluators with creative approaches to maximizing an evaluation's usefulness, requiring them to play diverse roles as trainers, facilitators, advocates and co-liberators as prescribed by Fetterman (1994). Major benefits of empowerment evaluation include the increased relevance and utility of the evaluation and its tendency to empower the participants of the evaluation. The benefits of empowerment evaluation outweigh such limitations as the overemphasis of face validity and the longer time required for its implementation. These benefits are particularly important in the field of human services where the empowerment of consumers is critical. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.