Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Institutional arrangements for evaluation

  • Open File: The Evaluation of Education Systems: The View at the end of the 1990s
  • Published:
Prospects Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Summary

Evaluations should be independent in terms of being able to arrive at impartial conclusions. They must be seen as being credible if they are to fulfil this function. Their impartiality is derived from using appropriate scientific methodology and by being protected from political interference. Within the government, evaluation offices should be lodged in independent agencies located close to decision makers, but not in the same office as the programme being evaluated. Scientific methods that protect against various forms of bias should be derived with assistance from the professional evaluation community.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Boston, J., et al. 1996.Public management: the New Zealand model, Oxford, U.K., Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henkel, M. 1991.Government, evaluation and change. London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • House, E.R. 1997. Evaluation in the government marketplace.Evaluation practice (Greenwich, CT), vol. 18, no. 1, p. 37–48.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • — 1980.Evaluating with validity. Beverly Hills, CA, Sage Publications. [in Spanish:Evaluación, ética, poder. Madrid, Morata, 1994.]

    Google Scholar 

  • —; Haug, C.; Norris, N. 1996. Producing evaluations in large bureaucracies.Evaluation (London), vol. 2, no. 2, p. 135–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Norris, N. 1995. Contracts, control, and evaluation.Journal of education policy (Basingstoke, UK), vol. 10, no. 3, p. 271–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Osborne, D.; Gaebler, T. 1992.Reinventing government. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, J.Q. 1989.Bureaucracy. New York, Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Ernest R. House
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

Original language: English

Ernest R. House (United States of America) Professor at the School of Education, University of Colorado, Boulder. His interests are in evaluation and policy. He has been a visiting scholar at UCLA, Harvard and New Mexico, as well as at universities in Australia, Austria, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Recent publications include;Professional evaluation (1993), Schools for sale (1998) andValues in evaluation and social research (with K. Howe). He has been a recipient of the Lasswell Prize (1989) for the article contributing most to the theory and practice of the policy sciences and of the Lazarsfeld Award (1990) for Evaluation and Theory, presented by the American Evaluation Association.

About this article

Cite this article

House, E.R. Institutional arrangements for evaluation. Prospects 28, 109–116 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02737783

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02737783

Keywords

Search

Navigation