Evaluation practice

Action research is used to negotiate criteria and indicators for ‘acceptability’ and to agree the scope of evaluation and the appropriate combination of data gathering methods, which are then used to elicit the views of citizens and other stakeholders. A recent example is the evaluation of projects in the UK Government’s Local eDemocracy National Project. The figure below illustrates the integration of criteria for ‘tool quality’, comprising questions related to e-participation tool acceptability to intended users, questions on how e-participation organisers and other stakeholders have addressed ‘key dimensions’ of public engagement, and ‘democratic criteria’ comprising questions that integrate and relate the other criteria to democratic principles set out for the government programme (see Whyte et al. 2005).

References

Whyte, A., Renton, A., & Macintosh, A. (2005). eDemocracy from the Top Down: An Evaluation of eDemocracy Activities Initiated by Councils and Government. Bristol City Council for The Local eDemocracy National Project. available at: http://itc.napier.ac.uk/ITC/publications.asp

Evaluation of eParticipation projects