Goal-Free Evaluation

This approach, developed by Michael Scriven, rests on the premise that an evaluation should examine the value of a program by investigating what it is doing rather than what it is trying to do. It is, in large part, an approach designed to reduce a particular kind of bias in evaluation. In other words, the organization of the evaluation is not based on what the program's goals are but rather on what the program is actually doing. If the program is meeting its goals and objectives, this should become apparent through an investigation of the program's activities and outcomes. The orientation in goal-free evaluation is more toward the ways in which a program meets the needs of its target clients or population and less on what managers and developers assert to be their intentions. Therefore, goal-free evaluation relies heavily on needs assessment to judge the quality and fit of the program to client needs.

In many ways, the idea of goal-free evaluation has been a powerful rhetorical device within evaluation practice, cautioning evaluators to examine more than what program managers and developers say they intend to do. Such goal statements often serve many purposes, both pragmatic and political, but provide a poor grounding for conducting an evaluation. Examining only stated goals diminishes the likelihood of uncovering unintended and unanticipated outcomes, either positive or negative.

Goal-free evaluation is unlikely to be a popular approach with managers and program administrators, in large part because it decreases their control over the focus of the evaluation and, therefore, the evaluation's conclusions. The notion of goal-free evaluation very explicitly takes the perspective of the consumer, the client, the recipient of services. Scriven uses consumer examples to illustrate this difference. For example, when one evaluates a product to purchase, such as a car, one is uninterested in the goals and intentions of the car manufacturer and instead makes a judgment about which is the best car based on an assessment of one's own needs.