Bureaucratic Needs and Evaluation Research

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Abstract
Participant observation supplemented by case study material on the activities of a federal research and program evaluation office are described. The focus is how organizational imperatives and government rules for research dominate in-house evaluations of government sponsored programs. The authors suggest that organizational imperatives give rise to a research orientation that promotes the use of inappropriate research methodologies, collection of inadequate data sets, and expedient program evaluations. The authors conclude that creation of research reports based on the gathering of data may be overshadowed by an inappropriate characterization of some government sponsored social service programs. Suggestions for amelioration of such problems, as these relate to the organizational position of the evaluation research office, are provided.