Principles of Evaluation

I believe that the seven principles of evaluation according to Noble (1994) in his paper “Towards an inclusive evaluation methodology” (Corporate Communications Journal, 4(1), pp. 14-23) are really useful for practitioners to understand the importance of evaluating techniques.
According to Noble, “evaluation is:
· Research: its purpose is to inform and clarify.
· Looks both ways: evaluation is a proactive forward-looking activity and, also, a reviewing backward-looking one.
· User- and situation-dependent: it is undertaken according to the objectives and criteria that are relevant to the organization and campaign concerned.
· Short term: campaign or project based.
· Long term: at a broader, strategic level, e.g. corporate reputation.
· Comparative: it frequently makes no absolute judgements but instead draws comparative conclusions.
· Multi-faceted: it is established as a multi-step process with a range of different evaluation methodologies required at each step.”