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Evaluating community care in Scotland: critical reflections on a study of policy implementation
Author(s) -
Fuller R.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 0907-2055
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2397.1998.tb00219.x
Subject(s) - imperfect , guard (computer science) , compromise , presentation (obstetrics) , sociology , outcome (game theory) , computer science , public relations , political science , management science , operations research , psychology , epistemology , social science , engineering , economics , medicine , philosophy , linguistics , mathematical economics , radiology , programming language
The paper describes the reality of evaluating the implementation of the reforms in community care in Scotland in 1993. In doing so it reports a trajectory familiar to evaluative researchers: the presentation of problems at the design stage, and their imperfect solutions; the emergence of delays in implementation, causing modifications to plans and timetable; discoveries made during the research which affected the hopes invested in the original design, and the adoption of pragmatic solutions; the outcome of the research and its reception. The paper ends with some critical reflections on the study and on evaluative research in general. It is suggested that evaluative research occupies a middle ground which results in the inevitability of compromise, queries whether there is truly an audience for uncompromised evaluation, and argues for the continuation of dialogue after completion as a guard against the ephemerality to which evaluation is often prone.