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How Legitimate and Justified are Judgments in Program Evaluation?

Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada, hurteau.marthe{at}uqam.ca

Sylvain Houle

Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada, houle.sylvain{at}uqam.ca

Stéphanie Mongiat

Université de Québec à Montréal, Canada, smongiat{at}hotmail.com

The main function of program evaluations is to describe programs in order to generate judgments of value. To be considered credible, judgments should be both legitimate and justified. The research presented in this article posed the following question: do program evaluation practitioners generate legitimate and justified judgments? A meta-analysis of 40 program evaluation reports was carried out, which found that only 50 percent of the reports generated judgments. While these judgments seemed legitimate, they were rarely justified. However, the elements required to support legitimate and justified judgments were present in the reports in similar proportions, whether the reports generated a judgment or not.

Key Words: judgment in program evaluation • legitimate justified judgment

Evaluation, Vol. 15, No. 3, 307-319 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1356389009105883


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