Empowerment evaluation: An approach that has literally altered the landscape of evaluation

•Self-evaluation is the most common form of evaluation being practice in society today.•Self-evaluation work is often rather superficial, practiced by amateurs without professional evaluation training, and is not informed by professional evaluation standards, principles, and ethics.•One of the important innovations of the past two decades has been the development of a professional and systematic approach to self-evaluation called empowerment evaluation. The quest for credible and actionable evidence to improve decision making, foster improvement, enhance self-determination, and promote social betterment is now a global phenomenon. Evaluation theorists and practitioners alike have responded to and overcome the challenges that limited the effectiveness and usefulness of traditional evaluation approaches primarily focused on seeking rigorous scientific knowledge about social programs and policies. No modern evaluation approach has received a more robust welcome from stakeholders across the globe than empowerment evaluation. Empowerment evaluation has been a leader in the development of stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation, setting a high bar. In addition, empowerment evaluation’s respect for community knowledge and commitment to the people’s right to build their own evaluation capacity has influenced the evaluation mainstream, particularly concerning evaluation capacity building. Empowerment evaluation’s most significant contributions to the field have been to improving evaluation use and knowledge utilization.