Evaluation

Education facts

Code: 2SO134

**Focus of the course** Evaluation is a research-based activity designed to assess the merits of policies and programmes. Increasing demands that policy decisions and public spending are based on evidence, mean that evaluation increasingly permeates all sectors of decision-making in society. The growing social and political significance of evaluation in turn means that evaluations need to be of high quality and informative.  Against this background, this course focuses on five central questions: What is evaluated? Why evaluate? How should evaluations be conducted? How are evaluations used? How can one assess the quality of evaluations?  **Module 1: Evaluation as practice. 7,5 hp** Module 1 of the course studies evaluation as a social phenomenon, as practice and as a skill. Topics covered in this part of the course include: What is policy and programme evaluation? How does evaluation differ from research? What societal developments explain the growth of evaluation and monitoring systems? How does evaluation relate to the "evidence" debate? From a more practical perspective, the course introduces different evaluation models and discusses how to design evaluations for specific purposes.   **Module 2: The evaluation society and evaluation use, 7,5 hp** Module 2 of the course addresses the following questions: What kind of problems are professional evaluators often confronted with in the course of their work? How are evaluations used? How can we assess the quality of evaluations (meta-evaluation).

Entry requirements

General entry requirements

Education offerings

Each offering has its own dates and conditions. Closed offerings are retained as history and do not mean that a new application is open.

• Evaluation

  Umeå University

  Start date: 18 January 2027

  End date: 24 March 2027

  Pace of study: 100 %