Best (1991) defines program evaluation research as involving a judgement of the effectiveness, social utility or desirability of a program in terms of carefully defined and agreed-upon objectives or values. Commonly, program evaluation research involves the formulation of recommendations for actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine ethical issues associated with program evaluation research.
With respect to the paper's purpose, it needs to be noted that program evaluation research is conducted by a variety of societal organizations, agencies and institutions, e.g., medical agencies, social welfare agencies, educational institutions, and business organizations. Some of ethical issues associated with program evaluation research are specifically related to the kind of organization, agency or institution conducting the research; while other issues are common to them all.
For the sociologist, however, who deals with program evaluation research, that is associated with all segments, areas, agencies and institutions within society, ethical issues are of concern across agency or institutional type. Therefore, both agency-specific and general ethical issues are discussed here.
Ethical issues in program evaluation research are multiple and difficult. This fact was highlighted in Morris and Cohn's (1993) study of a sample of 459 American Evaluation Association members who were surveyed about ethical challenges they encountered in evaluation work.
Surveyed respondents reported a wide variety of ethical conflicts, with evaluators frequently pressured to compromise their roles as scientists as well as the level of observed effectiveness of the evaluation program and/or product. Thus, the question that can be asked here is: What are the specific kinds of ethical dilemmas program evaluation researchers are confronted with?
One ethical challenge in program evaluation research concerns social responsibility and the...