Institutional Learning and Change Initiative

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Since its origins in North America in the 1960s, the field of program evaluation has grown considerably and its concerns have broadened from accountability to program improvement, decision support and institutional learning. Program evaluation is now commonly practiced in governmental organizations not only in North America but also in many countries ofWestern Europe and Oceania. Although program evaluation is a relatively new field with many controversies and lively debates, a unifying body of evaluation theory, methods and standards is gradually emerging. Evaluation has recently been described as a ?transdiscipline? like statistics and measurement. This paper is based largely on my personal experiences working in agricultural research organizations in developing regions. Here, a number of different types of evaluation are carried out, but program evaluation (as defined by Patton, 1997) is largely unknown. Distinct branches of agricultural research evaluation can be identified, with disciplinary roots in the natural sciences and in agricultural economics. The most rigorous agricultural research evaluations are economic studies. Systematic internal evaluation is notably lacking. Current pressures to improve performance, transparency and accountability are creating demands for more systematic evaluation, and many program evaluation concepts and methods would seem to be of value in agricultural research organizations. However, in the current scenario of declining funding for agricultural research managers are hesitant to expand their evaluation activities and explore unfamiliar paradigms and methods. Moreover, they not yet convinced that social-science-based program evaluation would produce useful results. Natural scientists and economists tend to view program evaluation as ?soft science? or no science at all.