What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and Evaluation Practice?
Many thorny debates about what counts as credible evidence have occurred in recent years, but few have sorted out the issues in a way that directly informs evaluation practice. In this volume, internationally renowned evaluators explore the challenges of designing and executing high quality evaluations in contemporary evaluation practice. A summary of what can be learned from the chapter authors about the strengths and weaknesses of both experimental and non-experimental approaches for gathering credible and actionable evidence will be presented. A proposal to revise the notion of an “Experimenting Society” to an “Evidence-based Global Society”, which includes replacing the “RCT Gold Standard” with the gold standard of “Methodological Appropriateness” will be offered as a avenue toward improving evaluation policy and practice.
