evaluation research

A type of policy research devoted to assessing the consequences, intended and unintended, of a new policy programme or of an existing set of policies and practices, including measurement of the extent to which stated goals and objectives are being met, and measurement of displacement and substitution effects. Evaluation research became a self-identified field during the 1960s, and has common roots with the War on Poverty. (It was obviously useful to know the impact of the various social programmes to combat discrimination, deprivation, and other perceived social ills.) Because evaluation research tends to be applied, interdisciplinary, and methodologically opportunistic, practitioners tend to publish via specialized outlets such as the journals Evaluation Review (formerly Evaluation Quarterly) and New Directions in Program Evaluation.