As long as I’ve known about evaluation, I’ve known about David Fetterman. Together with my colleague, Abe Wanderman, they developed the field of empowerment evaluation in the mid to late 1990s. However, David also draws from an anthropological background when he approaches research and evaluation. Recently, he published the 4th edition of his Ethnography text. Knowing nothing about this area of his work (nor having read previous editions), I dove in.

David took the cover photo himself on his way to base camp!This isn’t a book review. I don’t have any referent point with which to judge the quality of the except that I know David generally does quality work
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Instead, I’d like to zero in on two methodological topics that stuck out: Unobtrusive Measures and the Analysis of Qualitative Data. This first article in a two-article series deals with the unobtrusive measures.

Our team recently got back from the annual American Evaluation Association's conference in Minneapolis, MN.  AEA is the premier conference for evaluators and methodologists who work in the social and governmental sectors to share their recent innovations, results, and lessons learned. Like all great conference, the action happens both inside and outside of the sessions.  We have many more comment and reflections, but we first wanted to share some work that we presented on the SCALE initiative.