1: Focus on a manageable number of important program-related decisions.
The purpose of evaluating programs is to help those who must make
decisions about the program do so in an appropriate manner. You will discover
that evidence gathered in an evaluation study often plays only a minor role in
the decisions ultimately made about a program. For many decision makers, a
series of political and personal factors play a far more prominent role than any
evidence of program effectiveness provided by an evaluator. As an evaluator,
therefore, you will need to structure your evidence-gathering efforts to yield
information that has at least a reasonable chance of affecting the decisions to
be made.