The priorities used to focus the evaluation are reflected in his three
categories: using particular evaluation questions or methods, taking a comprehensive
approach to making a judgment regarding quality of the program, or
improving society and its programs by considering social equity and the needs of
those with less power. Like Stufflebeam, our purpose is to reduce the current
number of evaluation approaches. Although Stufflebeam's method of reducing
the approaches was to judge the quality of each, our synthesis of the approaches
is intended to describe each approach to help you, the reader, to consider different
approaches and their potential use in your work. 6 Although the many different
approaches to evaluation can seem confusing, their diversity allows evaluators to
pick and choose either the approach or the elements of an approach that work best
for each program they are evaluating. Our task is to categorize the approaches in
a way that helps you consider them and to expand your views of possible ways in
which evaluations may be conducted.