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This chapter develops theoretical aspects of an investigation conducted in Mendoza, Argentina, at the national University of Cuyo (UNCuyo), concerning the learning and development of social abilities on challenged students attending special education schools. First, the concepts of social abilities/social competence are analyzed; the next step is to approach the complexity of the overall evaluation, and, more specifically the evaluation of social abilities in educational contexts. An instrument of qualitative evaluation is presented. Finally, we present an analysis of social abilities in the communicative interaction on students with communicational difficulties and recommend guidelines for school activities.

This chapter examines the nature and role of theory in criminal justice evaluation. A distinction between theories of and theories for evaluation is offered to clarify what is meant by ‘theory’ in the context of contemporary evaluation practice. Theories of evaluation provide a set of prescriptions and principles that can be used to guide the design, conduct and use of evaluation. Theories for evaluation include programme theory and the application of social science theory to understand how and why criminal justice interventions work to generate desired outcomes. The fundamental features of these three types of theory are discussed in detail, with a particular focus on demonstrating their combined value and utility for informing and improving the practice of criminal justice evaluation.

Social comparison literature has long established that drawing comparisons facilitates competitive motivation. Yet, the literature has neglected how the actor may simultaneously become the target of comparison, which can likewise increase competitive motivation. Therefore, competitive motivation increases not only because coacting competitors draw social comparisons but also because they are simultaneously the target of other's social comparison. In this chapter, we build a dual process framework to explain how comparing and being compared each facilitate competitive motivation. We also posit that these processes – comparing and being compared, respectively – are bidirectional and reciprocal, as each process can incite the other. Finally, we discuss the circumstances under which comparing and being compared combine additively versus interactively to drive competitive motivation. Our theoretical framework brings together the disparate literatures on social comparison and evaluation apprehension under one unified theory of competitive motivation, and proposes new directions for competition research.

Building on sociological research that examines the allocation of rewards in peer evaluations, we argue that the recognition of cultural producers’ work varies with their status and social distance from the audience members who evaluate them. We study the influence of these two mechanisms within the context of the Norwegian advertising industry. Specifically, we looked at how cultural producers’ status and social distance from jury members affect their chances of being honored in “The Silver Tag” – one of the main digital advertising award contests in Norway – during the period 2003–2010. While our findings provide support for status-based rewards allocation, the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought. When accounting for the existence of previous connections between audience members and cultural producers, we find that cultural producers are more or less likely to receive an accolade depending on their degree of separation from the audience members. By exposing network-based determinants of consecrating decisions, and suggesting that the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought, our findings shed important light on the social foundations of evaluation and, more broadly, the mechanisms of reward allocation in cultural fields.

Although educators would likely agree that values and ethics are important in all disciplines, they have particular importance for practice-oriented fields. These applied professionals need to solve complex social problems that require the application of ethical standards and value perspectives. While the importance of value-engaged practice is known to the applied field, there is little research and conversation about how values can be integrated into teaching. This chapter synthesizes values-education approaches in various practice-based disciplines such as public administration (PA), program evaluation, social work, and public health. This chapter draws from empirical and theoretical works as well as the authors' experiences developing, participating in, and conducting values-based research on professionals and professional education.

Given the importance of trust in social life, the concept has had little direct attention from evaluators.¹ Trust is central to the seeming integrity of social processes, including, of course, the social processes we call evaluation. Evaluation depends for its success on cooperative relationships and a measure of trust. Evaluation stands in an interesting relationship to trust. The credibility and utility of evaluation rests on trust. Loss or lack of trust is a major impetus to evaluation, and evaluation sometimes takes the place of trust. The process of evaluation requires trust, and evaluation is used to underpin or provide a warrant for trust.

This work addresses how consumer perceptions of quality may be influenced by the composition of competition. I develop a theoretical framework that explains how consumer evaluations of quality can be negatively impacted by a product's stylistic similarity to popular competitors. These issues are examined empirically using more than 75,000 online consumer evaluations, from the evaluation aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, of 123 feature films released in the United States during 2007. Results suggest that during a movie's opening week, movies that are stylistically similar to the top-performing box office movie are evaluated less favorably. Additional analyses indicate that this negative effect may persist in later periods due to social conformity pressures, and that there is reduced demand for those movies that are stylistically similar to the top box office performer. This article contributes to the broader literature in strategic management by depicting how stylistic features of competitors can affect consumer behaviour and perceptions of quality in markets. This work also suggests managerial implications for entry-timing decisions and positioning choices.

Traditionally, the kinds of ethical inquiry that one encounters in program and policy evaluation involve two broad matters: Evaluator (mis)conduct – that is, concerns such as conflict of interest, contractual obligations, competence, integrity and honesty, and so forth – and protection of evaluation participants’ rights to autonomy, privacy, informed consent, and so on. Ethical inquiry in both cases is typically guided by a set of ethical theories, standards, guidelines, or principles that an evaluator must interpret and apply in the situation at hand (Newman & Brown, 1996). For example, the Joint Committee's (1994) Propriety Standards speak to matters of both evaluator conduct – with respect to formal agreements/contracting, conflict of interest, and fiscal responsibility – and to matters of participants’ rights. Similarly, the Guiding Principles for Evaluators, endorsed by the American Evaluation Association (see www.eval.org), address these two ethical concerns stressing the evaluator's duty or obligation with respect to methodological competence, integrity and honesty, and respecting people. These are important matters in professional ethics in evaluation, situated largely within the discussion of the ethics of principles or rules. However, this view of ethical inquiry in evaluation is not my concern here.

This chapter explores the relevance of critical race theory (CRT) and queer theory to the relational aspects of program evaluation. Often conceptual binaries that undergird traditional evaluation theory and practice (e.g., internal versus external evaluation, subjective versus objective analysis, observation versus intervention, and insider versus outsider positionalities) adversely influence rigid social roles between evaluator and participant limit a study's effectiveness in supporting programs for equity in contemporary school districts. To illustrate this approach, an array of problems within a program evaluation of a district-wide ethnic studies reform initiative is presented. Approaches to these challenges rooted in tenets of CRT and queer theory illustrate how the district was able to clarify goals and develop an effective implementation plan that focused on effective ethnic studies curriculum and pedagogy.

David Marquand (2004) opens his celebrated book on the ‘decline’ of public service by arguing (pace Tawney) that there is a fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy – the former dedicated to an essential economic inequality (competition); the latter dedicated to rights-based equity derived from civic ideals. His book highlights public sector institutions as the arena in which the inevitable tussle between the two is played out. The neo-liberal movement provides the ideological vehicle for reform of public institutions, designed to ‘root out the culture of service and citizenship’ (p. 2) – i.e., those civic ideals. At the heart of the struggle is professionalism, the combination of competence, judgement and principle, and neo-liberalism takes careful aim at it.