Evaluator Roles

Many textbooks on evaluation have no subject index entry for evaluator or evaluator role, suggesting that, at least for many evaluation theorists, the definition is [Page 147]taken for granted. In general, evaluators have been assumed to be specialists who exercise their special knowledge and skills in independent, detached ways to avoid bias in their evaluative work.

Sprinkled throughout the evaluation literature is a wide array of terms used to describe the roles of evaluators in their work. The following is a list of many of those terms.

The most clearly developed aspect of evaluator roles is the distinction between internal and external evaluators. External evaluators are outside of the programs, organizations, or whatever types of evaluands they are evaluating, and their virtue is in their objectivity, distance, freshness of perspective, and independence. They may, however, lack an understanding of the history and culture of the evaluand. Internal evaluators, on the other hand, operate from within programs, organizations, or other types of evaluands, and their virtue is in their familiarity with the program or organizational context and their ability to observe whether evaluation recommendations are implemented. Internal evaluators, however, are perceived as less objective and compromised by their position within their organization. There is, in addition, a hybrid external-internal role exemplified by evaluators contracted to do evaluation with a particular agency, organization, or program over an extended period of time, thus combining elements of both types of evaluator.

Evaluators' roles are defined by the knowledge and skills they need; the functions they perform; and how they interact with stakeholders, the organization or program, and the profession. The first is the aspect most fully explored, especially in discussions of the basic knowledge and skills required of evaluators. However, there remains a lack of any clear delineation of that body of knowledge and skills, which speaks to the diverse perspectives on evaluation's purpose and methodology.

Evaluators' professional obligations are, at least in the United States, codified in The Program Evaluation Standards and the Guiding Principles for Evaluators. These publications give direction for practice, provide a means for solving problems, and form a framework for judging the quality of the work evaluators do.

The development of the notion of a learning organization provides some articulation of evaluator roles vis-à-vis organizations. Seeking to transform programs and organizations, either through capacity building or targeted evaluation activities, evaluators often assume blended hybrid internal-external roles—for example, evaluator and human resource consultant or evaluator and strategic planner.

Less frequently discussed is the interpersonal and relational aspect of evaluator roles. Jennifer Greene's work has focused most specifically on this aspect in her discussions of “evaluator as engaged person,” which is reflected in the way evaluators present their work and in the locations in which evaluators are engaged. Not only do evaluators have knowledge and skill, they employ these in particular contexts, and the characteristics of the contexts, in turn, define evaluators' roles. Evaluation adopts a political stance, as observed by Carol Weiss, often by disproportionately casting its gaze on the poor, the disadvantaged, the powerless, and those in need. Evaluators who agree to conduct evaluations of programs both accept and promote the notion that the program is problematic or at least that the evaluation is worthwhile. Thus evaluators play a role of legitimating some and delegitimating other programs, putting some at risk but not others.

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