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Conference Paper
Constructing Effectiveness: The Emergence of the Evaluation Research Industry
Professor of Public Affairs
Director, RGK Center
for Philanthropy and
Community Service
Today, evaluation research is a multi-billion dollar industry focused on answering some variation on the seemingly simple the question: “Did the program work?” Over the past four decades, this enormously complex question has led to the creation of a limited set of large and successful firms – and a massive array of smaller and specialized firms -- that collectively employ a large number of trained experts who spend entire careers searching for evidence of impact and effectiveness. In this chapter, we sketch a brief interpretive history of the evaluation industry, tracking the emergence and expansion of the largest and most visible organizational manifestations of the drive to track effectiveness. Our intent is not to create a comprehensive historical narrative the encompasses all the many actors in this long and intricate story line, but rather to pull out selected moments in the emergence of an increasingly unified and organizational field.
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