The Public Good, the Private Good, and the Evaluation of Social Programs

Evaluation of the productivity of government-applied social research is considered from the aspects of the several major government and public constituencies concerned, in terms of "Whose benefits? Whose costs?" Public and government concepts of the public good in evaluation research are differentiated. Government-imposed constraints on the quality and quantity of evaluation research are outlined and their impacts considered. Constraints on research quality imposing unnecessary costs include misregulation of sponsored social research by rigid procurement regulations inappropriately modeled on military hardware procurement, rigid overspecification of research tasks, counter- productively cumbersome and costly OMB survey clearance procedures, and inefficient long-term investment. Some impacts on research community employment security, professional development, and R&D investment are considered. A need to disseminate more explicit standards of effective and effectively managed evaluation research is expressed.