More mq projects

I revisited the MQ Grants 'previous winners' webpage to find it updated with many more final reports. There are now 29 in total from across the competitive and strategic grants categories.

I've been thinking about how to best make use of these reports. I could compare the final report with the initial application (were available, and when not, I could approach the awardee and ask them for a copy). This may highlight changes, things they said they would do but haven't.

I've been grappling with the 'criteria' - should i use the excellent questions provided by Chesterton and Cummings and supplement with Datta etc? Stufflebeam has an excellent Metaevaluation checklist but it is too detailed with 300 items to be checked. If we could use this it would provide excellent quantitative data. But I thik we cannot.

The main issue for me at the moment is my first question is 'what evaluation forms and approaches were used in this project?' And I have a feeling my answer for majority is 'none'. Maybe its about terminology. Some things that are covered by the word evaluation are things like data collection - isn't this research though? Now I'm struggling with the difference between research and evaluation.....
some more searches required me thinks.

An article by Julia Coffman, Consultant, HFRP based on Scriven's work:

http://www.hfrp.org/evaluation/the-evaluation-exchange/issue-archive/reflecting-on-the-past-and-future-of-evaluation/michael-scriven-on-the-differences-between-evaluation-and-social-science-research

How are evaluation and social science research different?Evaluation determines the merit, worth, or value of things. The evaluation process identifies relevant values or standards that apply to what is being evaluated, performs empirical investigation using techniques from the social sciences, and then integrates conclusions with the standards into an overall evaluation or set of evaluations (Scriven, 1991).
Social science research, by contrast, does not aim for or achieve evaluative conclusions. It is restricted to empirical (rather than evaluative) research, and bases its conclusions only on factual results—that is, observed, measured, or calculated data. Social science research does not establish standards or values and then integrate them with factual results to reach evaluative conclusions. In fact, the dominant social science doctrine for many decades prided itself on being value free. So for the moment, social science research excludes evaluation.¹However, in deference to social science research, it must be stressed again that without using social science methods, little evaluation can be done. One cannot say, however, that evaluation is the application of social science methods to solve social problems. It is much more than that.