Quality

Reading Cooksey & Caricelli (2005) on Quality, Context and Use : Issues in Achieving the Goals of Metaevaluation.

There are many defined standards of quality and they basically relate to the evaluation models which are used in a study. Each model has a number of criteria under which a study can be evaluated against and therefore any metaevaluation must take into account these quality standards.

That brings me to the question in regards to my own study, what are the quality standards being employed. Since i have created a set of criteria based on a number of different models ie Scriven, Patton, Stufflebeam, Owen, Chesterton and Cummings. Should I be meeting with Stakeholders to find out what they constitute as quality for our context? This may help in turn, in ensuring the evaluation findings are put to better use (Johnson et al., 2005).

Another finding in this study referred to the lack of transparent information in the final reports. I'm finding in my search of the identified data (final project reports) the same thing, a lack of detailed data for a metaevaluation. The reports intended audience is different in the internal projects to the external projects.

The finding is that an organisation should identify what it may need from a metaevaluation and then ensure all evaluations that are conducted will one day be able to be metaevaluated. This would include defining the methodology in detail (for example).