Ethical Issues of Program Evaluation Research

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 evaluatio

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noted that in certain situations, methodological procedures can sometimes place these groups, already disadvantaged in society, in increased jeopardy. That is, certain methods involved in data collection can have negative psychoemotional or psychosocial consequences for the target group. To overcome this ethical problem, English recommends that target groups should be called upon to participate in evaluation research only as cooperative partners throughout the entire evaluation. An excellent example of the problematic aspects of program evaluation that violates concerns with respect to specific groups concerns standardized testing. According to Mathison (1991), the evaluation of curricular change as a result of state-mandated standardized testing was conducted using a sample of fourth grade science program students in New York. An indepth exploration of the effects of the program was said to show that it made no provisions for the consequences of testing for different students, that methods obviated obviates caring behavior and produced negative psychoemotional reactions in some students. Another ethical consideration related to program evaluation research concerns programs developed, implemented and assessed by the governm

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