Good theory development is grounded in empirical inquiry. In the context of educational evaluation, the development of empirically grounded theory has important benefits for the field and the practitioner. In particular, a shift to empirically derived theory will assist in advancing more systematic and contextually relevant evaluation practice, as…

The act of valuing in an evaluation may be perceived in different ways. We consider the multiple theoretic perspectives that govern an evaluator's behavior and present a typology of evaluator valuing roles. Within this typology we describe three ways in which value judgments are typically reached--by stakeholders alone, stakeholders and evaluators…

Describes the dialogue in an informal discussion group and asserts that because the group is interactive, dynamic, and applied it is an embodiment of the nature of evaluation knowledge. Discusses ways in which this group teaches about evaluation. (SLD)

The editors give each of the theorists a chance to respond to questions posed about the context of the situation in relation to their own experience in the field, exploring how the exercise had an impact on their evaluation designs.

The theorists whose work appears in this issue have confronted the exercise presented to them in vastly different ways. The editors of this journal asked these theorists to consider how they would evaluate the Bunche-Da Vinci program, and to make and specify assumptions about the program context. The primary task, however, was to describe "a…

Program theory plays a prominent role in many evaluations, not only in theory-driven evaluations. This paper presents a case study of the process of developing and refining a program's theory within a user-oriented evaluation. In user-oriented (or utilization-focused) evaluations, primary users can play a role in defining their own program theory.…

The purpose of this issue of "New Directions for Evaluation" is to examine, comparatively, the practical application of theorists' approaches to evaluation by examining four evaluations of the same case. The thought is that when asked to evaluate the same program (holding the case constant), the practical distinctions between theorists' approaches…