Editorial
| Author | John Guenther |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X221090438 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
Editorial
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2022, Vol. 22(2) 61–62
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/1035719X221090438
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Editorial
Our second issue of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia for 2022 brings together
three quite different articles with markedly different methodologies employed, an
insightful evaluator perspective, and a useful book review. The diverse mix of con-
tributions have some common threads though. The theme of participatory and
community-based approaches arises several times, as does the importance of narratives.
Cutting across all of the articles is the sense that evaluation has the very real potential to
benefit people.
The scoping review by Giulia Puinean and colleagues asks: ‘What are the various
approaches and underlying principles to community-driven evaluation, culturally
responsive evaluation, evaluation capacity building, and evaluation use and influence
within the [Early Childhood Development] context, as described in the literature?’
(p. 66). The findings of this study are important, mainly because they suggest that these
constructs are seldom embraced (at least as reported in the academic literature) and that
community-based approaches are not well understood. While the study was limited to
Early Childhood Development, it could well be worth asking the same question of other
community service sectors. The authors did suggest that these approaches might be
likely found in the grey literature, and this may well be so. But to me it begs the question
why these approaches are not understood by or used by evaluators from academic
institutions.
The article by Karen Crinall and colleagues describes a Most Significant Change
(MSC) methodology used to evaluate a program designed to support hospital staff
during a stressful period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The MSC stories gathered by
evaluators found that the intervention resulted in a ‘more caring and supportive
workplace culture’(p. 100). While the article does not discuss this, I suspect that the
evaluation itself –eliciting stories from stressed staff –created a further space for
sharing, communication, mutual support and a feeling of being heard, which was in
addition to the program. As evaluators we should not discount the benefit of narratives
in evaluation as a co-contribution to the benefits that emerge from good programs.
The article titled Lessons learned in evaluating system interdependencies using
qualitative methods by Eric Souvannasacd and colleagues provides good justification
for the use of narratives over structured interviews –albeit with a particular context in
mind –in qualitative evaluative research. What stands out to me in this paper is the
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