Ethical issues in policy evaluation

This article explores the relatively uncharted territory of ethical considerations relating to formal evaluation in the context of public service provision. The discussion focuses on three components: identifying values informing the content, criteria and methods of evaluation; promoting key professional standards to be applied during the process of evaluation; and highlighting ethical issues relating to interaction between evaluator and commissioner and between evaluator and other participants. The discussion draws attention to the relative neglect of ethical issues in the evaluation literature by reviewing key texts.