Unpacking the Participatory Process

Interest in collaborative forms of inquiry has increased dramatically in recent years in evaluation and social science research. One consequence of such interest has been the emergence of many different forms or genres of collaborative inquiry, such as stakeholder-based evaluation, deliberative democratic evaluation, practical participatory evaluation, transformative participatory evaluation, empowerment evaluation, and the like. In order to ensure clarity of purpose and application, it is necessary to differentiate among such approaches. One such framework—originally proposed by Cousins, Donohue and Bloom (1996) and later developed by Cousins and Whitmore (1998)—applies not only to collaborative and participatory forms of evaluation but to forms of applied social research in a broader sense. Within the framework consideration is given to both the goals and interests of collaborative inquiry (i.e., pragmatic, political,