Promoting Evaluation through Collaboration: Findings from Community-based Programs for Young Children and their Families

Collaborative evaluation engages key program stakeholders actively in the evaluation process. Distance between external evaluators and program staff is often minimal, based on the assumption that a collaborative stance will strengthen evaluation results and increase utilization of evaluation findings. Convincing empirical evidence to support these assumptions is scarce. This study uses evaluation findings from a county-wide, comprehensive, early childhood education initiative to support the contention that a collaborative approach can substantively improve evaluation findings.