Weiss, Carol Hirschon

Ph.D. Sociology, M.A. Government, Columbia University; B.A. Government, Cornell University. Weiss is the Beatrice B. Whiting Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where she has been since 1978. Her interests in evaluation began in the 1960s when she evaluated a domestic Peace Corps program in central Harlem. She has consulted on evaluation for dozens of agencies, including the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Department of Education, the World Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Canadian International Development Research Centre. She has been Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution, a Senior Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education, a Congressional Fellow, and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She has given keynote addresses to evaluation societies around the world.

A pioneer in evaluation methods and theories, Weiss has made path-breaking contributions. They include (a) recognition that evaluation has political dimensions, (b) a broader conceptualization of what it means to “use” evaluation, and (c) development of a theory-based approach to understanding the effects of evaluation. All of these ideas have now been incorporated into mainstream evaluation thought.

When Weiss began her work in evaluation, the evaluator was seen as a neutral observer above the fray. She showed that evaluators studied programs and policies that were the consequence of political activity and that results had possible ramifications for the political fortunes of the programs. Moreover, evaluation itself had a political stance. It demonstrated that the program was important enough to deserve evaluation but also problematic enough to require it. Evaluation focuses on the relatively minor problems that can be “fixed” and ignores the basic premises on which the program is based. It tends to take for granted the whole environment in which the program works. Weiss believed that evaluators needed to become more aware of the political role they play.

Weiss' extensive research on evaluation use has shown that despite the seeming disregard of many evaluation findings, the findings in fact often influence the way that people think about a program. Over time, the new understandings can percolate into program decisions. She called the process “enlightenment.”

Weiss developed some of the earliest ideas about what is now called “theory-based evaluation.” In her 1972 text, she discussed (complete with diagram) the value of basing evaluation on the theory underlying the program and showed methods of doing it. She suggested that evaluators could follow the sequence of ministeps that staff assume will lead from initial inputs to desired results. When evaluation tracks the attainment of these intermediate steps, it can show not only final outcomes but also why the program is or is not working as planned and where the theory is supported or breaks down.

Among her 11 books are Evaluation Research, one of the first comprehensive texts, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and has been translated into Spanish, German, and Thai, and Evaluation (1998), which has also been translated into Ukrainian. She sees evaluation as a means to help make programs more responsive to people's needs and make the world a more humane place.

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