In previous chapters there has been a good deal of discussion about ‘theory-driven’ and ‘theory-based’ evaluation. This approach, coupled with a degree of despondency among several evaluators about the apparent non-utilisation of evaluation research findings, has led to a fairly recent attempt to enhance the status of evaluation as an academic/professional activity. Ironically, although the present ‘generation’ of evaluators and writers on evaluation have almost as one discarded the experimental research design as something of a ‘gold standard’ to which all designs should aspire, the quest for evaluations to be taken more seriously by decision makers has turned to a predominantly quantitative system of verification.

To what extent this approach has moved or is likely to move evaluation into a new ‘generation’ or higher level of academic and professional endeavour will be examined later in this chapter. To assert that one of these modes of enquiry – meta-evaluation – is recent is somewhat deceptive since it is generally agreed that the term was coined by Scriven in an article published in 1969 (Scriven, 1969). Interest in meta-evaluation has appeared only spasmodically in evaluation texts and articles until a revival of interest in the topic during the last two decades. Yet, in the book by Rossi et al (1999), out of the 500 pages the topic of ‘meta-analysis’ takes up the equivalent of just half a page. Similarly, the voluminous text by Shaw et al (2006) devotes little more than one page to meta-evaluation or meta-analysis in all its 608 pages, while the general text on evaluation by Green and South (2006) does not mention either meta-analysis or meta-evaluation.

Interestingly, the paper by Scriven (1969) preceded the seminal work by Cochrane (1972) in which he pioneered the development of evidence-based medicine through his advocacy of the randomised controlled trial (RCT) as the most reliable means of producing valid data. Although, as noted in Chapter One, there was some initial opposition to what a few in the medical profession regarded as an unacceptably mechanistic foundation for clinical decision making, Cochrane's stimulus towards increasing efficiency and effectiveness within the health care system is now central to decisions about expenditure on new drugs and other clinical interventions.