This is for Program Evaluation Class

1. Naturalistic
Evaluation
Jasmine Ervins M.Ed.
Shika Hershel M.Ed.
Ilda Gonzalas M.Ed.

2. Naturalistic Evaluation
 An approach to assessment that evolved from
the work of researchers at the Indiana Center
for Evaluation
 Wolf
 Tymitz
 Guba
 Lincoln
 Has been used in numerous applications
including schools, social programs, museums,
and health care

3. Model’s Design

4. Two Streams
 Naturalistic Evaluation has evolved from two parallel
streams
 ‘Responsive evaluation’ from the evaluation field
 Naturalistic methodologies from the area of qualitative
‘inquiry’ used by anthropologists and sociologists
practicing ‘ethnography’
 Combining the two makes Naturalistic Evaluation an
intensive endeavor

5. Model’s Purpose

6. Purpose
 Generally used to discover what is wrong
(generally) and how to fix it (in a manner
that will last), or how something is working
(generally) and why (so you know how to
keep doing it, or for possible use by others)
 This is more rigorous than finding out what
is wrong (according to the audience) and
deciding what to do (according to the
audience)

7. Philosophical
Perspective

8. Major Role of Evaluation
 Guba and Lincoln believe it is to respond to audience
requirements for information in ways that take account
of the different value perspectives of its members
 Naturalistic Evaluation puts the evaluator in the role of
learner – the informants teach
 However, criteria for scientific rigor still apply!

9. General Phases
 Familiarization phase
 Gaining entry
 Understanding the Circumstance and the players
 Three C’s
 Collection of Data
 Classification and Analysis of Data
 Confirmation of Propositions
 Synthesis
 Presentation of findings and debriefing

10. Naturalistic Evaluation
 Pros
 When done correctly, it can provide a very complete
picture of a program’s context, stakeholders,
operations, effects (qualitative and quantitative),
and systems of relationship
 A participant-oriented ‘gold standard’
 Cons
 When done correctly, can
 Take a prohibitively long time
 Cost a lot
 Be very labor intensive
 When done incorrectly, can give a false sense of
knowledge

11. History of
Development

12. Background of Naturalistic
Evaluation Approach
O The Naturalistic approach gives the
evaluator freedom to choose the methods
used to collect, analyze, and interpret their
data.

13. Major Developer(s)

14. Responsive Evaluation
O Stake (175) is one of the
major developers of the
naturalistic evaluation
approaches.
O Stake was concerned that
conventional approaches
were not sufficiently receptive
to the needs of the evaluation
client.
O Stake believed that
evaluators should use
whatever data-gathering
schemes seem appropriate
relying heavily on human
observers and judges.

15. Robert Stake
O First evaluation theorist to introduce Participant
Oriented Evaluation into the field of education.
O Introduced the theory of Responsive Evaluation
which focuses on “re-directing data gathering and
interpretative efforts around emerging issues of
importance to program practitioners in the
evaluation setting” (Abma, 2005)
O Created the Countenance Framework in 1967. The
model refers to the two faces of evaluation:
description & judgment.
O Description includes the evaluator’s observation
and list of benchmarks for the activities being
evaluated. Judgment is the evaluator’s overall
rating of merit.

16. Uses of the Model

18. Implementation
Techniques

19. Implementation Techniques