Breakthroughs, advocacies and a return to validity in programme evaluation

This article offers one possible position statement on contemporary Programme Evaluation. Recent developments in this field of practice have seen some commercialisation, politicisation and retreat into theory. There has been a burgeoning growth of the use of programme evaluation for advocacy purposes. We argue that this has been to the neglect of validity – the justification, defensibility and credibility of an evaluation – and we counsel a return to earlier preoccupations with validity, some of which have been lost. We go further, to argue that there is a deficit in validity considerations which is ameliorated with a focus on judgement, experience and expansion of the ‘peripheral vision’ of the evaluator. A broad take on Humanism as an aspect of validity evaluation is also offered.