Book review: Collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation: Stakeholder involvement approaches
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X19848528 |
| Author | Jade Maloney |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book review |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1035719X19848528
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2019, Vol. 19(2) 107 –109
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1035719X19848528
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Book review
David M. Fetterman, Liliana Rodríguez-Campos and Ann P. Zukoski,
Collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation: Stakeholder involvement approaches.
New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2018. ISBN 9781462532827 (paperback); 172 pp.
$35 (paperback version).
Reviewed by: Jade Maloney, ARTD Consultants, Australia
Evaluation is a distinctly human endeavour. Although good evaluation involves tech-
nical skills and theoretical expertise, it also requires capability to build interpersonal
relationships with diverse stakeholders to enable effective evaluation delivery.
Research has also consistently identified stakeholder involvement in evaluation as a
critical factor impacting evaluation use – it can directly affect use as well as mediate
other factors that determine use (Johnson et al., 2009).
There is also an ethical dimension to stakeholder involvement in and, in some
cases, ownership of evaluation approaches. The Aboriginal Health and Medical
Research Council (AH&MRC) principles and the Australian Institute of Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Guidelines for Ethical Research in
Australian Indigenous Studies require evaluators to recognise Aboriginal rights to
self-determination and to control of research about their communities, understand con-
sultation as an ongoing process, enact Aboriginal people’s right to full participation
appropriate to their skills and experiences and ensure research reflects the needs and
interests of the community and is of benefit to them. In disability policy and research,
there is growing advocacy for the philosophy of ‘nothing about us without us’.
In this context, it is not surprising that stakeholder involvement approaches to evalu-
ation have gained traction in recent decades. The main approaches are collaborative,
participatory and empowerment evaluation. Although practitioners often use these terms
as if they were interchangeable – as is commonplace in evaluation – the approaches dif-
fer substantially in theory.
Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation: Stakeholder
Involvement Approaches aims to set the record straight by defining and illustrating
each of these approaches in theory and practice. Chapter 1 provides a good start to
delivering on this purpose – with a clear introduction to the three approaches, with the
essence of each neatly distilled into a cartoon.
Chapters 2–10 are grouped in threes – with an initial chapter outlining ‘essential’
information about each approach (definition, advantages, essential features, conceptual
848528EVJ0010.1177/1035719X19848528Evaluation Journal of AustralasiaBook review
book-review2019
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