Comments

In Leverage and Evaluation Effectiveness: Beating Plowshares into Swords, William D. Neigher (Saint Clare's Hospital Community Mental Health Center, Denville, NJ) remarks on the notion put forth by Frank G. Caro (see SOPODA 3:2/81P1604) that most evaluators are in a weak organizational position to demand methodological rigor or full program cooperation, & thus cannot produce strong evaluations, for which reason he proposes a model in which evaluation is closely tied to regulation. Implicit assumptions of Caro's approach -- that sophisticated methodology is equivalent to evaluative utility, & that evaluation's role is one of accountability rather than amelioration or advocacy -- are questioned. In addition, aligning evaluation with regulation could have seriously harmful effects on human services programs. A more useful model might be closer linkage between evaluation & research. In Is Regulatory Evaluation the Answer?, Nancy R. Kingsbury (9555 Persimmon Tree Rd, Potomac, Md) remarks that Caro's assumption that regulatory evaluation can provide definitive favorable or unfavorable judgments on social programs is untested & may not be valid. Caro has failed to explore sufficiently the reasons why managers do not usually regard evaluation as useful. His model appears likely not to educate managers in the usefulness of evaluation, but to so polarize the practice of evaluation as to make such education impossible. 9 References. W. H. Stoddard.