Developmental Evaluation

The purpose of a developmental evaluation is to help develop the intervention or program. In developmental evaluation, evaluators become part of the program design team or an organization's management team. They are not apart from the team or merely reporting to the team but are fully participating in decisions and facilitating discussion about how to evaluate whatever happens. All team members, together, interpret evaluation findings, analyze implications, and apply results to the next stage of development. Evaluators become involved in improving the intervention and use evaluative approaches to facilitate ongoing program, project, product, staff, and organizational development. The evaluator's primary function in the team is to facilitate and elucidate team discussions by infusing evaluative questions, data, and logic and to support data-based decision making in ...