Valuing Different Perspectives - evaluation and evaluative knowledge

互联社区项目的中心目标是与社区一起开展研究，而不是针对社区开展研究。AHRC现在迫切希望了解这种在社区研究方面的投资的遗产是什么。由此产生的项目的雄心勃勃和复杂性意味着，评估遗产的尝试以及它们是否会成功存在重大挑战。这项研究的目的是探索评估项目的不同方法，并为未来的互联社区和类似项目制定指导方针。这将通过对同一项目进行两次评价来实现。一项评价将是参与性的，由社区伙伴领导；一个是学术主导。学术或专家主导的评估，比如社会科学领域常见的评估，提供了许多方法来发现“什么有效”或提供物有所值的方法——随机对照试验；大规模调查；成本效益分析;变化理论；现实主义评价等。这种评价可能涉及使用由学术研究人员定义、创造和分析的定量或定性方法，这些研究人员通常被视为专家，但他们可能被从受政策或项目影响的社区本身移走。重要的是，评估标准也是由学术研究团队设定的，通常是在研究项目开始之前。评估者有权定义某事是“成功”还是“失败”，这可能会产生持久的影响。相比之下，由项目核心的社区成员形成和领导的评估现在越来越多地用于评估计划的成功和遗产。这些项目旨在获取实施的“本地知识”，以及对社区本身有价值的东西。它们回应了一种担忧，即项目的许多软结果往往难以定量衡量，没有被专家领导的评估所捕获，甚至没有被低估。参与式评估旨在赋予社区界定“成功”或“失败”的权力。该项目及其核心的同步评估旨在通过询问当社区合作伙伴领导评估和学者领导评估同一项目时会发生什么，来探索知识生产中的权力问题。产生的研究成果是否不同？为什么会这样呢？为了回答这些问题，该项目将举办讲习班来补充评估。由社区成员和学者参加，第一次会议将讨论所选择的各种评价方法的过程、共同点、差异、价值和局限性。第二次讲习班将制定一系列适合未来以社区为基础的研究的评价准则。这不是一个“工具箱”，而是对不同环境中使用的不同方法的探索，以及什么有效，什么无效，以及为什么有效。这将使未来的项目能够在规划社区项目时做出更明智的决定，以确定他们可能使用的评估方法。我们无法规定社区主导的评估将会提出的评估问题。学术评估将回到最初的项目简报，并将最初的目标与研究团队可以使用的方法结合起来，以询问项目是否已经交付了它所设定的目标。该项目还旨在探索互联社区计划的更广泛遗产。两个评价地点的一个关键问题是人权中心作为这类活动的资助者的作用，以及今后如何加以改进。

A central aim of the Connected Communities programme has been to carry out research with communities, not on communities. The AHRC are now keen to understand what the legacy of this investment in research with communities has been. The ambitious and complex nature of the resulting projects means there are significant challenges for attempts to evaluate legacy and whether they will be successful. The aim of this research will be to explore different approaches to evaluating projects and produce guidelines for future Connected Communities and similar projects. This will be carried out by delivering two evaluations of the same projects. One evaluation will be participatory, led by community partners; one will be academic-led. Academic- or expert-led evaluations, such as those common in the social sciences, provide many ways to find out "what works" or provides value-for-money - randomised controlled trials; large scale surveys; cost-benefit analysis; theories of change; realist evaluation etc. Such evaluations may involve the use of quantitative or qualitative methods that are defined, created, and analysed by academic researchers, often regarded as experts, but who may be removed from the communities themselves which have been subject to a policy or project. Importantly, the evaluation criteria are also set by the academic research team, typically before the research project has begun. The evaluator has the power to define whether something has been a "success" or "failure" which can have a long-lasting impact.In comparison, evaluations that are shaped and led by the community members at the heart of the projects are now increasingly used to assess the success and legacy of initiatives. These aim to capture the "local knowledge" of implementation and what was of value to the communities themselves. They respond to a concern that many of the softer outcomes of projects, that are often difficult to quantitatively measure, are not captured or even devalued by expert-led evaluations. Participatory evaluations aim to give communities the power to define "success" or "failure". This project, and the simultaneous evaluations at the heart of it, aims to explore these questions of power in the production of knowledge by asking what happens when community partners lead an evaluation and academics lead an evaluation of the same project. Are the research outputs produced different? And why might this be the case?To answer these questions, the project will run workshops to supplement the evaluations. Attended by community members and academics, the first will discuss the processes, commonalities, differences, values and limitations of the various evaluation approaches chosen. The second workshop will develop a series of evaluation guidelines suited for future community-based research. Rather than being a "toolkit", this will be an exploration of the different methods used in the different contexts and what worked, or did not work, and why. This will enable future projects to make better informed decisions as to what evaluation methods they might use when planning community projects. We cannot be prescriptive about the evaluation questions the community-led evaluation will ask. The academic evaluation will go back to original project briefs and align the original aims with the methods that the research team can use to ask whether the project has delivered what it set out to. The project also aims to explore the broader legacy of the Connected Communities programme. A key question in both evaluation sites will be the role of the AHRC as a funder of this type of activity and how this can be improved in future.