title: Empowerment evaluation: An approach that has literally altered the landscape of evaluation.
abstract: The quest for credible and actionable evidence to improve decision making, foster improvement, enhance self-determination, and promote social betterment is now a global phenomenon. Evaluation theorists and practitioners alike have responded to and overcome the challenges that limited the effectiveness and usefulness of traditional evaluation approaches primarily focused on seeking rigorous scientific knowledge about social programs and policies. No modern evaluation approach has received a more robust welcome from stakeholders across the globe than empowerment evaluation. Empowerment evaluation has been a leader in the development of stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation, setting a high bar. In addition, empowerment evaluation's respect for community knowledge and commitment to the people's right to build their own evaluation capacity has influenced the evaluation mainstream, particularly concerning evaluation capacity building. Empowerment evaluation's most significant contributions to the field have been to improving evaluation use and knowledge utilization.
authors.affiliation: Claremont Evaluation Center, School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation, School of Community & Global Health, Claremont Graduate University, 123 E. 8th Street, Claremont, CA 91711, United States. Electronic address: stewart.donaldson@cgu.edu.
authors.forename: Stewart I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Donaldson
mesh_terms: D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D011209:Power, Psychological; D015397:Program Evaluation
keywords: David Fetterman; Empowerment evaluation; Honest; Knowledge utilization; Self-evaluation; Stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation