Internal and External Policy Evaluators

One of the primary decisions to be made before conducting any type of policy evaluation is to make a determination of who should conduct the evaluation; organizational members, or someone external to the organization. Each option has its own advantages and disadvantages, and as long as the consumers of the evaluation data are aware of who conducted the evaluation and are also aware of the potential limitations of each alternative then neither option has any particular advantage over the other. The specific circumstances surrounding the necessity for any evaluation will have a significant impact on which alternative will be chosen. For example, the time available, the availability of funding, the availability of subject matter expertise, receptivity to the findings of the evaluation, and the availability of administrative support.

Internal evaluations have numerous advantages particularly their low cost. Additionally, internal evaluators tend to have greater familiarity with the organization itself, the evaluated program and associated policies, the various organizational stakeholders, and of course the targeted population. The major disadvantage to the conduct of an internal evaluation is its actual and perceived bias. There is actual bias because it is human nature for organizational members to perceive program flaws through the lens of their common organizational experiences. Consequently subsequent findings may be diluted or may completely overlook significant problem areas. There is perceived bias inherent in internal evaluations because the subsequent findings will always be suspect for the very reasons just discussed for actual bias.

External evaluations also have a number of advantages the primary of which is the minimization of bias, at least internal bias. ìThe major advantage of external evaluation is that it is perceived to be impartial because evaluators supposedly have no stake in the outcome of the evaluation (Theodoulou and Kofinis, 2004, p. 197).î Of course we must always be aware that everyone has some interest and some form of bias. The key is to minimize bias as much as possible and to be aware of its existence when evaluations are being developed and the subsequent data is being analyzed. An additional advantage to using external evaluators is that they are not part of the culture of the organization, program, or policy being evaluated and their professionalism, previous experiences, education, values, and perceptions enables them to offer a totally different perspective to problem identification and potential remediation. One of the major disadvantages to the use of external evaluators is that they are costly, especially when compared to the option of conducting an internal evaluation, assuming that reasonably competent people are available within the organization. Another major disadvantage is time. External evaluations take more time because the evaluators need to immerse themselves into the organization or program to learn as much as they can about what the organization, programs, and policies that they are evaluating. Additionally, the evaluators may experience resistance from organizational members who may view them as a threat and therefore withhold critical information. Finally, the findings of external evaluations may not be well-received by stakeholders who have something to loose, or the findings may be dismissed as being superficial due to a lack of program or policy understanding.