The foundations of Policy Analysis [antikvár]

PrefaceFacing a class of crusty and very skeptical California city managers one day in 1972, the senior author failed miserably with his explanation of the mysteries and beauties of methods to do evaluation researchthe nominal subject of a semester's course work.' The failure was due less to his lack of technical or substantive knowledge than simply not knowing how things really worked and not being able to locate evaluation methodologies within the richer frames of reference or experience represented by the students. Because they knew better, just learning evaluation methods and procedures was not enough. They knew better partly because their experiences with other techniquessuch as planning, programming, and budgeting and management information systems (both quite fashionable at the time)had been far from successful. And they knew better because technical words such as effectiveness, efficiency, and equity, all mainstays of evaluation research, had meant so many different practical things to them over the years. As one class member said, an efficient program was one that "kept being funded year after year without having to knock heads with city council or the taxpayers " Or in the words of another city manager, "an effective program is one that keeps council members happy and helps me keep my job." Or, "an equitable policy is one that spreads the resources around to the departments so that no one screams about getting a raw deal." From a practitioner's perspective, it was hard to argue otherwise.ix