NG Guat Tin, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Applied Social Sciences
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Email: [email protected]
Introduction
An emphasis on programme evaluation among human service organizations occurs within the context of “the era of accountability,” in which public and private sectors spearhead the drive towards accounting for the use of public resources and funding for results (Kettner, Moroney, & Martin, 2013, p. 4). In America, it dates back to the 1960s and 1970s where evaluation serves to justify new or continuation of public policies or programmes, whether facing opposition to its implementation or experiencing doubts about its effectiveness in addressing various social problems, such as poverty (Datta, 2011). Though evaluation is rooted in social science research methods, it was given an additional boost by new public management (also referred to as managerialism). Royse, Thyer, Padgett, and Logan (2006) referred to programme evaluation as “applied research used as part of the managerial process” (p. 11). Managerialism that was adopted by public sector organizations in many western nations, since the late 1970s, heralded management concepts and tools that were designed for “auditing, control, regulation, assessment, inspection and evaluation” (Diefenbach, 2009, p. 899).
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