Evaluation Lives

The following quotes are taken from interviews M held with B in 2014-15. Both M and B are LDS and they used that fact to explore several themes that I've seen in my interviews with LDS people about making evaluative decisions as individuals, in families, in church councils, in work settings, and more. The interviews themselves are available here . Many others are available in the first blog post in August 2017. B: In our marriage, the decision came from the basis that husband and wife are equal and therefore they should have equal say in the decisions.  It has never mattered that I'm the wage-earner in our home and that essentially 100% of our income comes from me.  It isn't my money and her money.  It is our money.  And therefore I have no more power in my voice than she does in terms of how we choose to spend the money, because we are equal.  And that's been the policy ever since the beginning because I think that's how God wants it to be.  At least...

One of my major interests early on in my research into evaluators' lives was how different disciplines prepare their novitiates in doing evaluation within each discipline. Many of the interviews I'm linking to this blog come from people representing different disciplines and it would be interesting to search among them to see if there are patterns across representatives from similar disciplines. ogy field. I am linking some of their interviews to this post to facilitate looking for patterns across them (they are all available through the folders linked my first post in August): ST's (an experienced IT professional and now retired professor) interviews are here : MK's (an IT student) interviews are here : BL's (an experienced IT professor with years of professional experience) interviews are here :

I haven't been posting here since Sept 2017 but I've been busy transcribing interviews and linking them in the folders created in the first post in August 2017. Today I've been reviewing several interviews I conducted with my son Greg when he was in high school and then when he was an undergraduate and then a graduate student. On page 110 of the 136 pages of his transcripts, he gives and explains this formula he began developing as he was in a program evaluation class I was teaching at BYU. He does a good job of pulling together thoughts from across more than a decade about his own evaluation life and patterns he sees in others' lives. Here is the formula: Truth + Freedom + The Choice to Self-reflect = The Foundation for Effective Evaluation I invite you to read his analysis that goes into that formula and wrote your thoughts and comments on it if you have any by writing a comment to this post.  His document is here .

I've been reading everything I could find by Truman Madsen, my Philosophy 110 professor from 1971. As I've listened to his talks about insights from Joseph Smith I've realized that these fundamentals have driven much of my interest in the foundations for evaluation over the last 45+ years. But, unfortunately, I just discovered his Eternal Man (1966) book which summarizes these fundamentals and connects them to the philosophers I've tried to understand over this time in just 80 pages! I wish I had studied and assigned this book to all my evaluation students over the years. It would have helped me explain my views and why I think of evaluation as I do so much better than I was able to explain them myself. The brief review of the book by Chauncey Riddle from volume 8 (1968) of BYU Studies copied below and Chapter 1 of Madsen's book provide an outline of issues that give me the great hope that all people can be much better evaluators than most evaluation writers gi...

This article illustrates how important some evaluations can be and the fact that they are best made with a combination of rationality AND intuition, gut, feelings and other components that aren't always perceived as being rational. The role of rationality in evaluation came up in many of my interviews.  The following quotes from an interview with Chauncey Riddle, a professor emeritus of philosophy at BYU illustrates some of the issues, which I summarize this way: Most people believe evaluations should be rational but in practice, they go with their feelings, hunches, the Spirit, their conscience, the Light of Christ and/or other inclinations that don't always appear to be rational. R: Well, I've learned that yes, that you can't evaluate without real help from the Spirit. But if you use your own judgment solely, you're very error-prone. DDW: Even if you're trying to be righteous and... R: Even if you're trying to do what's right. And the only ...

The following quote from a professional (who wants to remain anonymous) I interviewed illustrates how most people I've talked to deal with their parents' or other significant others' values and evaluations (both embracing and modifying or rejecting them) while figuring out their own. What I think about when I think about evaluation, what first comes to my mind, is grades. I grew up thinking about “how do people evaluate me and value the products I produce?” And I think about it very personally. This may be more personal than you want or than you could share or write about. But I can remember my mother saying to me, “Never let it be said of you, as Alma had to say of his son Corianton going after the harlot Isabel, ‘because of your actions they would not believe my words.’” My grandfather was [in the public eye] at the time and she would say, “Never let it be said of you that because of your actions they would not believe grandfather’s words.” She never intended this, but it...

May 21, 2013 Thoughts on this project and how to tailor it based on what I've been learning so far. As I’ve been thinking about this project since participating in class last night, I’ve had several thoughts. I want to get a copy of and review the audio recording that Melissa made from class (my recorder didn’t work) because I agree with her that a lot was said about what I could do with my final chapter in terms of exploring themes I see across the cases and anticipating what readers might do with these stories and themes in moving the field of evaluation forward, particularly in their own practices.  The students also encouraged me to give more thought to sharing my own journey in bringing these pioneers’ stories to light. I want to do some of that but feel hesitant about doing so for a couple of reasons-  1. I am pretty much in awe of these people and don’t want to be taking anything away from their stories by taking up space with mine, and  2. I feel that my ...