The emergence of new evaluation paradigms raises serious questions about how merit can be established and judged. Linking Auditing and Metaevaluation addresses this concern, introducing a strategy by which the quality of inquiry procedures and products can be assured and retrospectively assessed. Based upon the model of fiscal auditing, the technique is applicable to a variety of social scientific investigations and specifically includes non - conventional paradigms such as naturalistic evaluation. Effective regardless of the nature of the inquiry, auditing is also an excellent means of organizing data, thus promoting theorizing and identification of relationships in that data. Each section includes exercises designed both to encourage readers to adapt concepts to their own inquiries and to promote feedback, which leads to the possibility of new insights and theories on metaevaluation.
Thomas A. Schwandt is Professor of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology in the College of Education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He also holds appointments in the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and the Department of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership. He has been a faculty member and a Fellow of the Poynter Center for Ethics and American Institutions at Indiana University, Bloomington and member of the faculty in medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His papers on qualitative methodology, issues in the philosophy of interpretive social science, and evaluation theory have appeared in a variety journals and edited books. He is the author of Evaluation Foundations Revisited: Cultivating a Life of the Mind for Practice (Stanford University Press, 2015), Evaluation Practice Reconsidered (Peter Lang, 2002), and Evaluating Holistic Rehabilitation Praxis (Kommuneforlaget, Oslo, 2004); and co-author (with Kenneth Prewitt and Miron Straf) of Using Science as Evidence in Public Policy (National Academies Press, 2012) and (with Edward Halpern) of Linking Auditing and Meta-evaluation (Sage, 1988); co-editor (with Katherine Ryan) of Exploring Evaluator Role and Identity (Information Age Press, 2002), (with Peder Haug) of Evaluating Educational Reforms: Scandinavian Perspectives (Information Age Press, 2003), and (with Bridget Somekh) Knowledge Production: The Work of Educational Research in Interesting Times (Routldege, 2007). He was the editor of the American Journal of Evaluation from 2010-2014. In 2002, he received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award from the American Evaluation Association for his contributions to evaluation theory.
Linking Auditing and Metaevaluation Differentiating Standards, Procedures and Accepted Principles Preparing an Audit Report Constructing an Audit Trail Auditing an Inquiry Developing Other Applications
