David M. Fetterman

Empowerment Evaluation Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Empowerment evaluation continues to crystallize central issues for evaluators and the field of evaluation. A highly attended American Evaluation Association conference panel, titled “Empowerment Evaluation and Traditional Evaluation: 10 Years Later,” provided an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of empowerment evaluation. Several of the presentations were expanded and published in the American Journal of Evaluation. In the spirit of dialogue, the authors respond to these and related comments. The authors structure their discussion in terms of empowerment evaluations past, present, and future as follows: (a) Yesterday (critiques aimed at empowerment evaluation issues that arise from its early stages of development), (b) Today (current issues associated with empowerment evaluation theory and practice), and (c) Tomorrow (the future of empowerment evaluation in terms of recent critiques). This response is designed to enhance conceptual clarity, provide greater methodological specificity, and highlight empowerment evaluations commitment to accountability and producing outcomes.

2001 INVITED ADDRESS: Empowerment Evaluation: Building Communities of Practice and a Culture of Learning

Empowerment evaluation is the use of evaluation concepts, techniques, and findings to foster improvement and self-determination. Program participants—including clients—conduct their own evaluations: an outside evaluator often serves as a coach or additional facilitator depending on internal program capabilities. Empowerment evaluation has three steps: 1) establishing a mission; 2) taking stock; and 3) planning for the future. These three steps build capacity. They also build a sense of community, often referred to as communities of practice. Empowerment evaluation also helps to create a culture of learning and evaluation within an organization or community.

Qualitative Approaches to Evaluating Education

Qualitative research approaches are part of the intellectual landscape in educational evaluation. The use of qualitative approaches in evaluation has been fruitful. Classic qualitative approaches, representing accepted innovations, include ethnography, naturalistic inquiry, generic pragmatic (sociological) qualitative inquiry, and connoisseurship/criticism. Metaphors and phenomenography represent novel approaches with roots in the classics. Efforts to establish standards commensurate with the mainstream of scientific inquiry serve to further institutionalize qualitative approaches, anchoring them in the fertile soil of educational evaluation.

Videoconferencing On-Line: Enhancing Communication over the Internet

Videoconferencing technology allows geographically disparate parties to see and hear one anotheracross campus or around the globeusually through satellite or telephone communication systems. It is typically an expensive undertaking involving costly equipment, high user fees, and elaborate infrastructure, often including a dedicated videoconferencing room. These costs and the required preparations for a videoconference have limited the number of potential

INTEGRATING QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE EVALUATION METHODS IN SUBSTANCE ABUSE RESEARCH

For many years, there has been an ongoing debate about whether we should focus on qualitative or quantitative evaluation. Although prior discussions have often been adversarial (i.e., advancing one to the exclusion of the other or defending ones existence), most practitioners largely consider them to be two sides of the same coin. The need for integration is particularly evident when evaluating substance abuse programs because the individuals involved often have competing contextual demands and multiple problems that require the use of multiple types of treatment, outcomes, and analysis models. Unfortunately, there is little published literature on how to do this. In this paper, some specific opportunities and techniques are identified for combining and integrating qualitative and quantitative methods from the design stage through implementation and reporting.

Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation: Building a Strong Conceptual Foundation for Stakeholder Involvement Approaches to Evaluation (A Response to Cousins, Whitmore, and Shulha, 2013)

Defining, compartmentalizing, and differentiating among stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation, such as collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation, enhance conceptual clarity. It also informs practice, helping evaluators select the most appropriate approach for the task at hand. This view of science and practice is presented in response to the argument of Cousins, Whitmore, and Shulha (2013) that efforts to differentiate among approaches have been ‘‘unwarranted and ultimately unproductive’’ (p. 15). Over the past couple of decades, members of the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation Topical Interest Group (CPE-TIG) have labored to build a strong theoretical and empirical foundation of stakeholder involvement approaches in evaluation. This includes identifying the essential features of collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation. It also includes highlighting similarities and differences among these three major approaches to stakeholder involvement. Our primary disagreement with the article by Cousins et al. concerns the value and appropriateness of (1) differentiating among the stakeholder involvement approaches; (2) misleading characterization; (3) confounding and comingling terms, and (4) using collaborative inquiry as the umbrella term for stakeholder involvement approaches.

Web Surveys to Digital Movies: Technological Tools of the Trade

The purpose of this discussion is to highlight some of the technological tools of our trade. The irony in sharing information about Webbased tools is that many remain current for about a nanosecond. Bleeding-edge tools and applications are purposely excluded from this discussion. A select set of Internet or Webbased tools that have survived the novelty stage are presented, including Web surveys, digital photography, voice recognition, file sharing, videoconferencing on the Internet, instantaneous chat rooms, and digital movies. Benefits and a few cautions are presented.

Sexual and gender minority identity disclosure during undergraduate medical education: "in the closet" in medical school.

Purpose To assess identity disclosure among sexual and gender minority (SGM) students pursuing undergraduate medical training in the United States and Canada. Method From 2009 to 2010, a survey was made available to all medical students enrolled in the 176 MD- and DO-granting medical schools in the United States and Canada. Respondents were asked about their sexual and gender identity, whether they were “out” (i.e., had publicly disclosed their identity), and, if they were not, their reasons for concealing their identity. The authors used a mixed-methods approach and analyzed quantitative and qualitative survey data. Results Of 5,812 completed responses (of 101,473 eligible respondents; response rate 5.7%), 920 (15.8%) students from 152 (of 176; 86.4%) institutions identified as SGMs. Of the 912 sexual minorities, 269 (29.5%) concealed their sexual identity in medical school. Factors associated with sexual identity concealment included sexual minority identity other than lesbian or gay, male gender, East Asian race, and medical school enrollment in the South or Central regions of North America. The most common reasons for concealing one’s sexual identity were “nobody’s business“ (165/269; 61.3%), fear of discrimination in medical school (117/269; 43.5%), and social or cultural norms (110/269; 40.9%). Of the 35 gender minorities, 21 (60.0%) concealed their gender identity, citing fear of discrimination in medical school (9/21; 42.9%) and lack of support (9/21; 42.9%). Conclusions SGM students continue to conceal their identity during undergraduate medical training. Medical institutions should adopt targeted policies and programs to better support these individuals.

In Response to Drs. Patton and Scriven

Empowerment evaluation (EE) is conducted throughout the United States and countries around the world, including Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Finland, Canada, and South Africa. EE scholarship is borne out of practice (and often necessity) by dedicated coaches and critical friends. When advances are made in the development of EE scholarship, there is cause for celebration. When setbacks and mistakes occur, these must be corrected. When misstatements and misunderstandings are disseminated, it is important to set the record straight. In this brief response, I offer my appreciation of the reviewers, address what I believe are misstatements of fact regarding the book, and identify directions for the nature of future dialogue. (A detailed response to their reviews is available at http://homepage.mac.com/ profdavidf/eeresponse.)

Gifted and Talented Education: A National Test Case in Peoria

This article presents a study of a program in Peoria, Illinois for the gifted and talented that serves as a national test case for gifted education and minority enrollment. An analysis of the program, and the referral, identification, and selection mechanisms, was conducted. This case study concludes that low minority enrollment need not suggest that the local school district engages in discriminatory practices or that low enrollment is explained by genetic differences between races. Instead, the study points to the impact of the community’s socioeconomic characteristics on gifted enrollment. Fundamentally, the study addresses the issues of equal opportunity, ability, and achievement in American education.