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Participatory evaluation in community development: An inquiry into indigenous evaluation among the Gbaya of the Central African Republic
Abstract
Participation in community development work has been emphasized since the late 1960's; Participatory Evaluation (PE), however, was not introduced until the mid-1970's. At about that same time, Participatory Research (PR) was seeking to help shift the ownership and control of community development work and social research back into the hands of the local community. One important contribution of PR, has been the recognition of the importance of indigenous knowledge. As indigenous knowledge and indigenous practices were being recovered by communities during PR, it soon became evident that the Western model of development--and its emphasis on the transfer of Western technological knowledge--was often insufficient, inappropriate, or culturally unacceptable. Although evaluation practitioners increased the participation of the local community in the evaluation of its own development work, PE was often limited to "participation-in-evaluation" (PiE). The ownership and control of the evaluation process often stayed within the hands of the evaluation "experts" often using Western evaluation methods. The first part of the study examines the emergence and evolution of PE in community development work during the past three decades. The study then explores the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya people of western Central African Republic, where the researcher has lived and worked with health and community development since 1982. Ethnographic interviewing of key informants explored the following questions: What are the indigenous evaluation practices of the Gbaya? How is information gathered and used? Who can be involved in decision-making, in what contexts? The study further investigates Gbaya forms of evaluation through the participant observation of the participatory evaluation of a Lutheran church-sponsored development program in western Central African Republic. A framework for better understanding PE, including the factors of "power", "facilitation methods", and "previous training and experience", are also presented. Using criteria from the framework, the following sub-categories of PE are offered: Participation-in-Evaluation (PiE), Less Participatory Evaluation (LPE), and Highly Participatory Evaluation (HiPE). Finally, a "Gbaya Way of Decision-making" is presented as one model of indigenous evaluation. This is followed by recommendations to practitioners of PE, as well as recommendations for the further research of Indigenous Evaluation.
Subject Area
Adult education|Continuing education|Bilingual education|Multicultural education|Social structure
Recommended Citation
Stecker, Carl Christian, "Participatory evaluation in community development: An inquiry into indigenous evaluation among the Gbaya of the Central African Republic" (1996). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9619443.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9619443