Attitudes toward evaluation: An exploratory study of students’ and stakeholders’ social representations

Marie-Therese Schultes, Marlene Kollmayer, Mathias Mejeh and Christiane Spiel

Evaluation and Program Planning, 2018, vol. 70, issue C, 44-50

Abstract: Positive attitudes toward evaluation among stakeholders are an important precondition for successful evaluation processes. However, empirical studies focusing on stakeholders’ attitudes toward evaluation are scarce. The present paper explores the approach of assessing social representations as indicators of people’s attitudes toward evaluation. In an exploratory study, two groups were surveyed: University students (n = 60) with rather theoretical knowledge of evaluation and stakeholders (n = 61) who had shortly before taken part in participatory evaluation studies. Both groups were asked to name their free associations with the term “evaluation”, which were subsequently analyzed lexicographically. The results indicate different social representations of evaluation in the two groups. The student group primarily saw evaluation as an “appraisal”, whereas the stakeholders emphasized the “improvement” resulting from evaluation. Implications for further evaluation research and practice are discussed.

Keywords: Attitudes; Stakeholders; Social representations; Free associations; Participatory evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149718918300788
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:epplan:v:70:y:2018:i:c:p:44-50

DOI: 10.1016/j.evalprogplan.2018.06.002

Access Statistics for this article

Evaluation and Program Planning is currently edited by Jonathan A. Morell

More articles in Evaluation and Program Planning from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().