Book Review: A research agenda for evaluation
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1035719X231155967 |
| Author | Kylie Kingston |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Book Review
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2023, Vol. 23(2) 116–119
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1035719X231155967
journals.sagepub.com/home/evj
A research agenda for
evaluation
Dahler-Larsen, P. (2021). A Research Agenda for Evaluation. Edward Elgar. ISBN: 978 1 83910 107 6
Reviewed by: Kylie Kingston,School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology (QUT),
Brisbane, Australia
As editor of A Research Agenda for Evaluation, Peter Dahler-Larsen boldly opens the
book by critiquing distinctions of evaluation as a logical process, a semi-professional
field, a socio-political practice, and as evaluation research. The discussion points to the
necessity of a ‘skeptical turn’(p. 4), shining a light on the modernist and rational
assumptions underpinning much of evaluation practice. From within this contextual
framing arises the critical agenda for the future of evaluation research and the purpose
of the book, being ‘to offer a fresh perspective on a new research agenda for evaluation,
while taking complications and reflexivities onboard’(p. 4).
Rather than presenting answers, a series of questions are provided to promote critical
thinking and point toward areas of importance for this new research agenda. These
areas include:
·New social configurations of evaluation
·Involvement and participation in evaluation
·Evaluation data
·Consequences of evaluation
·Concepts and perspectives on evaluation
·New practices of evaluation
·Evaluation and democracy
Within the final chapter of the book, Dahler-Larsen returns to question ‘What does
the future of evaluation look like?’(p. 225). Here, the dual nature of the evaluation
researcher is presented as someone who does evaluation, but also research on eval-
uation itself. This duality fosters reflexivity, enabling the future of evaluation to include
acknowledgement of its contestability, subjectivity, and lack of neutrality. Dahler-
Larsen postulates that ‘rather than being merely the further promotion of even more
evaluation, research on evaluation may be a form of reflexivity that helps evaluation
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