Making social sciences useful to society: issues and practices in programme evaluations

Summary

This course will be of interest to both Master’s and PhD students. Programme evaluation/policy evaluation (within administrations, NGOs, private consultancies, or as a freelancer) is an essential career opportunity for holders of Master’s degrees in social sciences who do not intend to pursue academic research. For PhD students, it broadens the range of possible career paths and encourages reflection on the contributions of academic research to society and policymaking.
NB : no prerequisites are necessary, particularly in terms of methodology.
This interdisciplinary course draws on the reflections on evaluation developed over several years at LIEPP. It offers a broad introduction to the issues and practices of evaluation, which is not limited to methodological issues and addresses them in a pluralistic manner, drawing on a variety of disciplinary contributions. More specifically, the course addresses the issues involved in programme evaluation from three main perspectives: methods, values and the use of knowledge (Delahais et al. 2021).

Program

Programme evaluation/policy evaluation (within administrations, NGOs, private consultancies, or as a freelancer) is an essential career opportunity for holders of Master’s degrees in social sciences who do not intend to pursue academic research. For PhD students, it broadens the range of possible career paths and encourages reflection on the contributions of academic research to society and policymaking. This interdisciplinary course draws on the reflections on evaluation developed over several years at LIEPP. It offers a broad introduction to the issues and practices of evaluation, which is not limited to methodological issues and addresses them in a pluralistic manner, drawing on a variety of disciplinary contributions. More specifically, the course addresses the issues involved in programme evaluation from three main perspectives: methods, values and the use of knowledge (Delahais et al. 2021).

Module 1: Introduction and impact evaluation methods

This first module introduces the subject with a few definitions and essential vocabulary, before addressing the issue of impact evaluation methods. As the field of evaluation has historically been built (in the context of Johnson’s Great Society in the United States) around the use of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of public interventions, we first review the main characteristics of these approaches, particularly in terms of counterfactual causal inference logic (Fougère and Jacquemet 2019; Rossi et al. 2004). The module then presents ‘theory-based’ evaluation approaches (Weiss 1998; Devaux-Spatarakis 2023), which were developed in response to the limitations of these initial (quasi-)experimental approaches by proposing to open up the ‘black box’ of interventions in order to break down (most often using qualitative methods) the various mechanisms that lead to the production of a given impact. We show how these approaches are based on a different conception of causality, generative rather than counterfactual. Without denying the importance of methodological and epistemological conflicts surrounding these impact evaluation issues, the course obilized the complementarity between these different approaches (Revillard 2023).

Module 2: Values, criteria and indicators

Beyond the application of different social science methods, evaluation involves making judgements about the intervention. The practice of evaluation therefore involves normative choices that are reflected in the evaluation questions, the criteria used and the associated indicators (OECD/DAC Network on Development evaluation 2019; Teasdale 2021). This second module revisits this more normative dimension of evaluation practice, reflecting on its relationship to the scientific/methodological aspects presented in the first module. We show that the question of the values obilized in evaluation involves power relations between stakeholders in the policy under study, and reflect on the professional role of the evaluator in this context. In addition to its epistemological and ethical dimensions, this second module proposes to work concretely on the definition of indicators, a central tool of evaluation, addressing both the practical issues (how to construct a good indicator) and the associated risks (effects on of indicator-based steering on policies).

Module 3: Evaluation use

As an applied social science, programme evaluation pays particular attention to the issue of its use: how do evaluations actually lead to changes in the policies studied? How are they appropriated by public decision-makers and citizens? The field of evaluation has developed theories on the use of knowledge and practical tools to promote it, all of which are also useful for fundamental research (Alkin and King 2017). They invite broader reflection on knowledge brokering and science-society relations. In this module, we will review the theories developed on the use of evaluation (in connection with the ongoing EVALUSE research project funded by CIVICA). We will then explore several tools aimed at promoting the use of knowledge: stakeholder participation, online evidence repositories, systematic literature reviews, and knowledge brokering practices. Throughout the modules, this course addresses important cross-cutting issues in research training, even beyond the specific case of policy evaluation: methodological and epistemological issues surrounding causal inference, the relationship between values and knowledge production, and issues surrounding the use of knowledge. The course follows an active learning approach, with many interactive sequences. Students will be encouraged to tailor the course to their specialisations/disciplinary and thematic interests. Assessment will be based on attendance, using a pass/fail system.

Trainer

Anne Revillard, professor of sociology at Sciences Po and the director of the Laboratory for interdisciplinary policy evaluation (LIEPP)

Informations

Duration : 8 hours course over 2 half-days 
Dates : 8 January 2026, 9am-1pm and 2-6pm 

Please register using this online form before December 15th.

For further information about LIEPP, please contact andreana.khristova@sciencespo.fr