Valuing Different Perspectives - evaluation and evaluative knowledge

互联社区方案的一个中心目标是与社区一起开展研究，而不是针对社区。澳大利亚人权委员会现在热衷于了解这种对社区研究的投资的遗产是什么。由此产生的项目雄心勃勃，性质复杂，这意味着在评估遗产以及它们是否会成功方面存在重大挑战。这项研究的目的是探索不同的方法来评估项目，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进行。一项评价将是参与性的，由社区伙伴领导;另一项评价将是学术领导。学术或专家主导的评价，如社会科学中常见的评价，提供了许多方法来找出“什么有效”或提供物有所值的评价-随机对照试验;大规模调查;成本效益分析;变革理论;现实主义评价等。这种评价可能涉及使用定量或定性方法，这些方法由学术研究人员定义、创建和分析，这些人往往被视为专家，但他们可能会被从受某项政策或项目制约的社区中除名。重要的是，评估标准也是由学术研究团队制定的，通常是在研究项目开始之前。评估者有权确定某件事是“成功”还是“失败”，这可能会产生长期的影响。相比之下，由项目核心的社区成员制定和领导的评估现在越来越多地用于评估倡议的成功和遗产。这些活动旨在掌握执行工作的“当地知识”以及对社区本身有价值的内容。这些评价回应了一个关切，即项目的许多软性成果往往难以量化衡量，专家主导的评价没有捕捉到这些成果，甚至贬低了这些成果的价值。前瞻性评价旨在赋予社区界定“成功”或“失败”的权力。该项目及其核心的同步评价旨在探讨知识生产中的权力问题，方法是询问当社区合作伙伴领导评价和学者领导对同一项目的评价时会发生什么。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，以补充评价。社区成员和学术界人士参加了第一次会议，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。第二个讲习班将制定一系列适合于未来社区研究的评价准则。这不是一个“工具包”，而是探索在不同情况下使用的不同方法，以及哪些有效，哪些无效，以及为什么。这将使未来的项目能够在规划社区项目时更好地决定使用何种评估方法。我们不能对社区主导的评价将提出的评价问题作出规定。学术评估将追溯到最初的项目简介，并将最初的目标与研究团队可以用来询问项目是否实现了其目标的方法相一致。该项目还旨在探索互联社区计划的更广泛遗产。两个评估地点的一个关键问题是澳大利亚人权委员会作为这类活动的资助者的作用，以及今后如何改进这一点。

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.