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The social context of water quality improvement evaluation
Author(s) -
Thurston Linda P.,
Smith Christa A.,
Genskow Kenneth,
Stalker Prokopy Linda,
Hargrove William L.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
new directions for evaluation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.374
H-Index - 40
eISSN - 1534-875X
pISSN - 1097-6736
DOI - 10.1002/ev.20026
Subject(s) - stakeholder , watershed management , watershed , context (archaeology) , resource (disambiguation) , environmental resource management , water quality , environmental planning , quality (philosophy) , computer science , environmental science , geography , political science , public relations , computer network , ecology , philosophy , archaeology , epistemology , machine learning , biology
The complexity of physical and social contexts for water resource management presents considerable problems for designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions for water quality and quantity problems. Water resource management is increasingly being conducted on a watershed scale, where watersheds are areas of land that drain into the same water body. Deborah Rog's model of context‐sensitive evaluation provides a framework for understanding and addressing the complexity of watersheds and watershed management, restoration, and protection. This chapter discusses the problems inherent in evaluating watershed projects. It presents three overarching considerations for evaluating these types of projects: diversity of stakeholder groups, complexity of identifying and measuring outcomes, and evaluation ethos. Finally, the chapter stresses the need for specifically evaluating the social dimensions of watershed projects and provides an example of a water quality evaluation that addresses regional social indicators. Rog's five areas of context are described in this example. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc., and the American Evaluation Association.