Evaluation in Today’s World. Veronica G. Thomas
vessels sailing from England to India while the men on the other vessels did not receive this treatment. During the 1700s, even more systematic controlled evaluations were carried out to determine the impact of citrus intake on the prevention of scurvy.
In the United States, with the wartime activities of the 1800s, it may not be surprising to note that perhaps the earliest formal evaluation occurred in 1815 when the military sought to evaluate arms supplies (Madaus & Stufflebeam, 2000). Additionally, during the 1800s, U.S. cities faced substantial problems related to poor sanitation and the lack of piped water. This meant that incidences of disease such as cholera were high among the population in cities. It was during this time when the U.S. government first asked for external inspectors to evaluate public facilities such as prisons, schools, hospitals, and orphanages (cited in Mertens & Wilson, 2019).
Overview of Evaluation in the 20th Century
Widespread implementation of evaluation, with its extensive use of social science methods, is a relatively modern 20th-century phenomenon. Many events and influential leaders through their scholarship and/or practice throughout the 20th century impacted the evaluation field and/or utilized evaluation to spotlight and redress social injustices. While not exhaustive, Table 3.2 highlights key individuals, agencies/organizations, studies, federal policies, and programs that stimulated the growth and use of evaluation during the 20th century. It should be noted that Table 3.2 is not limited to specific evaluation studies or evaluators, per se, but also highlights specific incidents (e.g., launch of Sputnik) that contributed to the implementation of new programs and evaluations of those programs, as well as people who promoted or engaged in evaluation research to advance social justice agendas. The sections following the table elaborate on some of these individuals and factors, placing them into the sociopolitical and cultural context of the time.
Table 3.2
Evaluation in the First Half of the 20th Century: 1900–1950s
Evaluation in the modern times of the 20th century was influenced tremendously by the social, economic, and political climate of the day. Conditions such as social inequities, escalating poverty rates, unprecedented growth and recession, political perspectives toward deficit reduction and balanced budgets, and funding for social programs all impacted interest in and the demand for program evaluation. During the early part of the 20th century, evaluation and measurement studies were occurring in various areas such as public health, mortality and morbidity from infectious diseases, housing, worker productivity and occupational training programs, and standardized educational testing (Morra-Imas & Rist, 2009; Rossi et al., 2004). Many of these studies were small-scale efforts conducted by government agencies and social services.
In 1921, two U.S. government agencies, the General Accounting Office (GAO), renamed the Government Accountability Office in 2004, and the Bureau of the Budget (BOB), which in 1970 became the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), were established, and they took the lead in conducting evaluations at the federal government level. Most of the GAO’s work involves auditing, program evaluations, policy analysis, and legal opinions and decisions on a broad range of government programs and activities both at home and abroad. While the OMB’s most prominent function is to prepare the president’s budget, it also evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures; assesses competing funding demands among agencies; and sets funding priorities.
Evaluation During the New Deal, Wartime, and Economic Growth: 1930s–1950s
Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected U.S. president in 1933 during the midst of despair and impoverishment of the Great Depression, enacted the New Deal. This included a series of social programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations focusing on providing relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression (Berkin et al., 2011). With the New Deal, there was rapid growth of the federal government, and new agencies were created to manage and implement these new large-scale programs. At this time, there was also great demand for evaluating these programs’ effectiveness in stimulating the economy, creating jobs, and instituting social safety nets (Morra-Imas & Rist, 2009). By the 1930s, social scientists were routinely engaged in evaluations of social programs using social science methods.
The first half of the 20th century, in particular, was characterized by extreme and explicit racial prejudice and legal discrimination in the United States. African Americans continued to be marginalized through enforced segregated and diminished access to facilities, housing, education, and opportunities. Jim Crow laws, a set of repressive regulations and customs affecting virtually every section of daily life, made it legal for legislators to racially segregate everything including schools, public parks, swimming pools, theaters, residential areas, jails, asylums, phone booths, residential homes for the elderly and persons with disabilities, and even cemeteries. Further, some states required the use of separate textbooks for African American and white students; some courts even provided African Americans and whites separate Bibles for their swearing in.
The New Deal, although far from ideal, featured some of the most antiracist policies in U.S. history up to that time. Prior to 1933, assistance to African Americans, particularly in the South, was virtually nonexistent. However, the New Deal did bring some federal assistance. For example, New Deal work-relief programs were open to unemployed people of all races, although whites got the better jobs and higher wages. While African Americans received fewer benefits than their white counterparts, on average, from many New Deal programs, they did receive some benefits. Although African Americans (and white women) experienced some limited advancement during this time, many New Deal programs were still able to discriminate against African Americans since many of these federal programs were administered through local authorities or community leaders whose racial biases influenced their program administration. In public assistance programs, for example, African Americans generally received substantially less assistance than their white counterparts, and some charitable organizations even excluded African Americans from their soup kitchens. In another example, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration offered white landowners cash for leaving their fields fallow, which they happily accepted; they, however, did not pass on their government checks to the Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers who actually worked the land (Leuchtenburg, n.d.). Virtually no attention was paid to evaluating programs, through a social justice lens, to document the (known) harsh realities faced by persons of color in accessing and benefiting from existing social programs of the time.
The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Program Evaluation
As more large-scale programs were being implemented in various areas, such as for the military, urban housing, jobs, juvenile delinquency, occupational training, and health, there was increasing interest in evaluation to assess the success, or lack thereof, of these programs. The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study is a notable example of a social program, and its accompanying evaluation, that was initiated in the 1930s. It is one of the earliest experiments of a social program (Forsetlund, Chalmers, & & Bjørndal, 2007). This experimental evaluation was deemed to be a comprehensive attempt to determine if helpful interventions would deter delinquency and produce other important changes in the behavior and personalities of a cohort of boys, many of whom seemed headed for difficulty (Geis & Dodge, 2003).
The following case study provides an opportunity for readers to briefly review and reflect on the Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study.
Case Study: Example of Experimental Evaluation in the 1930s: The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study
The Cambridge-Somerville Youth Study, which began in 1935, is one of the earliest attempts at building evaluation into a community-based treatment program to prevent juvenile delinquency. One contribution of this study to evaluation’s history was its early success in combining large-scale