Advocacy Impact Evaluation, Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation Vol 5 No 9

Advocacy and policy change evaluations
focus on policy as the unit of analysis
rather than the more traditional program or
project. There is growing interest in this form of
evaluation as evidenced by a new American
Evaluation Association Topical Interest Group
with this focus. (See http://www.eval.org/
aboutus/organization/tigs.asp.)
Julia Coffman began her important
article “What’s Different About Evaluating
Advocacy and Policy Change?” by noting what’s
not different. I want to reaffirm her perspective.
Advocacy evaluation, like all evaluation, is
guided by the profession’s Principles and
Standards. Advocacy evaluation can be, and I
believe should be, utilization-focused. That means focusing the evaluation on
intended use by intended users, and evaluating the
evaluation by that standard.