Amelioration

To engage in evaluation is to engage in an activity that has the potential to improve the evaluand, or the human condition, more generally. Logically speaking, no evaluation in and of itself must necessarily purport to be helpful, and making a value judgment does not entail providing prescriptions, remediation, or amelioration. Michael Scriven has clearly delineated the distinction between doing evaluation, making a value judgment, and making a recommendation. In a theory of evaluation, this is an important distinction. In evaluation practice, however, the making of value judgments and the provision of recommendations becomes blurred because we have come to expect the work of evaluators and the purpose of evaluation to be more than simple rendering of value judgments: The purpose of evaluation is also ...