Empowerment Evaluation: From Theory to Practice

This article will focus on the practical application of the principles and methods of empowerment evaluation. Empowerment evaluation, conceptualized by Dr. David M. Fetterman, is described as "the use of evaluation concepts, techniques, and findings to foster improvement and self-determination" (Fetterman 1997). (For a complete description of the empowerment evaluation model, see Fetterman's 2001 book Foundations of Empowerment Evaluation). While that description tends towards the abstract, the practical sum of the debate between proponents and critics appears to be that empowerment evaluation is somewhere between classical evaluation and evaluation training. It is unabashedly "customer-oriented," and it shares the burden of evaluation with the evaluated group. Because it straddles the boundary between evaluation and training, to many empowerment evaluation represents a controversial new twist on established evaluation ideas.