Evaluation in Today’s World. Veronica G. Thomas
principles, logic models, and information about designing an evaluation.
Chapter 2 Evaluation Ethics and Quality Standards
istock/Devrimb
Evaluators must use their own moral compass, in conjunction with the guidance of the profession’s principles and standards, to take the most ethical and socially just course of action possible.
Making ethical decisions throughout the evaluation process is a relatively easy task when the facts are clear and the choices black-and-white. But it is a totally different story when the evaluation context is clouded by ambiguity, incomplete information, cultural incongruence, biases, multiple points of view and values, conflicting responsibilities, and political pressures. Different stakeholders often prioritize different values and weigh risks and benefits differently. In such situations, which evaluators experience frequently, engaging in ethical behaviors and producing a quality evaluation depends not only on evaluators’ methodological skills and experience, but also on their critical insight, integrity, cultural competence, and willingness to take a socially just and defendable course of action in view of the standards and guidelines of the profession and the context in which the evaluation takes place.
After reading this chapter and participating in the activities, readers will be able to meet the following learning objectives:
Explain the origins of research ethics codes and their relevance to evaluation
Identify sources of ethical thinking in evaluation
Demonstrate ethical sensitivities particularly in settings where there might be cultural incongruence and cultural conflicts of interest between the evaluator and the evaluation context
Discuss and distinguish between the Evaluators’ Ethical Guiding Principles and the Program Evaluation Standards
Use the Evaluators’ Ethical Guiding Principles and Program Evaluation Standards to support ethical decision making and evaluation quality in diverse contexts
Introduction
It is expected that an evaluator’s work results in an evaluation that is ethical, culturally responsive, and high quality. In reality, achieving these important outcomes is more daunting than it appears on the surface. Due to the idiosyncratic, political, and applied nature of social programming, and subsequently the evaluation of those programs, ethical issues can arise that, if not properly handled, will negatively impact the integrity and quality of the evaluation. While the evaluation profession has written, and publically disclosed, ethical principles and quality standards, these represent only a reference point for guiding the attitudes and behaviors of evaluators. Professional evaluators also need to have a keen awareness and deep understanding of contextual factors that may give rise to the complexity and urgency of dealing with ethical concerns in diverse settings.
Ethics is a branch of philosophy focusing on values relating to human conduct with respect to the “rightness” and “wrongness” of actions. It involves standards for responsible conduct prescribed by an external source (e.g., society, businesses, professional organizations) aimed at guiding individual decision making and behaviors. This is in contrast with morals, which stem from within individuals—that is, individuals’ own personal boundaries and principles of right and wrong. The following activity provides an opportunity for readers to reflect on and discuss ethics from their own perspective.
Reflect and Discuss: What Ethics Means to You
Most adults have a vision or image in their mind of an ethical business, ethical organization, ethical government, or ethical society. On the individual level, ethics has a specific and oftentimes unique meaning and source. Using the prompts that follow, reflect on and discuss what ethics means to you.
What does ethics mean to you as a student, parent, spouse/partner, employee, and/or other roles?
What is the basis of your own ethical decision making and behaviors?
Questions adapted from Patton, M. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods, (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE
With today’s 24/7 cable news cycle, we are frequently bombarded with reports of unethical behaviors engaged in by businesses, politicians, and other professionals. Reported ethical infractions range from cheating (e.g., testing scandals in schools), stealing, and misuse of funds to inappropriate sexual behaviors, abuse of power, misrepresentations, and lying. Reports of these and other unethical behaviors, ultimately, erode confidence and public trust. As social, economic, and political discord manifests in myriad ways throughout the United States, many politicians, educators, activists, practitioners, and researchers, as well as the general public, have become increasingly attuned to the importance of ethics in navigating various aspects of our daily existence.
If evaluations are to be useful to program administrators, staff, participants, sponsors, and the public, the work must be planned, implemented, and disseminated in an honest, objective, and fair manner. In the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA, 2018a) Evaluator Competencies, the first competency listed under the professional practice domain is
1.1 Acts ethically through evaluation practice that demonstrates integrity and respects people from different cultural backgrounds and indigenous groups.
It is essential that evaluators conduct ethically grounded evaluations in the diverse settings in which they work. Ethically grounded evaluations are characterized by ongoing critical thinking, reflection, judgment, and decision making. This is squarely aimed at protecting the rights of stakeholders and building daily ethical routines into evaluation planning, implementation, and reporting. There is no separate stage in an evaluation during which ethical issues must be addressed; instead, they arise throughout the entire evaluation process and, thus, must be dealt with continuously. Ethical evaluations require evaluators with more than knowledge of ethics. They also need evaluators with sensitivities, such as the ability to recognize the ethical dimensions of a situation, and a commitment to ongoing ethical self-examination throughout their work. Furthermore, ethical issues in evaluation are not limited to highly egregious acts such as falsification or fabrication of data and violations of confidentiality, but they can also involve seemingly small, everyday decisions and behaviors such as what information or which stakeholders to engage or ignore, what data to collect or dismiss, and how and when to report the evaluative information.
This chapter examines evaluation ethics and quality standards that are expected to govern the behavior of evaluators and the outcomes of an evaluation. While ethical issues in evaluation undoubtedly extend beyond the behavior of the evaluator (to include others such as clients, sponsors, and users), this chapter is primarily concerned with the evaluator’s ethics in relation to various stakeholders within the evaluation context. The chapter begins with a brief historical perspective on research ethics, including the origins of our present-day approach to research ethics and ethical principles emerging from the Belmont Report, which serves as the foundation for protection of individuals involved in research and evaluation studies. The importance of ethics in evaluation and the discipline’s major professional guidelines and principles are discussed. The chapter’s content and activities are designed to help evaluators develop a keen awareness of how ethical issues can manifest themselves across all stages of the evaluation process, particularly in settings where there might be cultural incongruence and a cultural conflict of interest between the evaluator and the evaluation context.
A Brief Historical Perspective on Research Ethics
While research and evaluation serve different purposes, historical knowledge of research ethics can be valuable in helping evaluators understand the state of contemporary evaluation