Whitmore, Elizabeth

This volume addresses three basic questions: what is participatory evaluation? In what contexts is it most useful? How does one actually do it in practice? The two primary themes in the volumes are practical participatory evluation , which is pragmatic and has as its central function the fostering of evaluation use; and transformative participatory evaluation which is based in emancipation and social justice activism and focuses on the empowerment of oppressed groups.

This chapter explores meanings of partiicpatory evaluation. It identifies two principal streams of participatory evaluation, streams that loosely correspond to pragmatic and emancipatory functions. After describing these streams, the authors present a framework for differentiating among forms of collaborative inquiry and apply it as a way to 1) compare the two streams of participatory evlauation and 2) situate them among other forms of collaborative evlauation and collaborative inquiry.