DONALD T CAMPBELL EVALUATION THEEORIST
FOUNDING FATHER OF EVALUATION DONALD T. CAMPBELL Donald T. Campbell is known as one of the “founding fathers” of evaluation theory. His work has been extremely influential in the evaluation field, even though his papers were mostly written for general social science audiences. Campbell was also interested in psychological theory, methodology, sociology of science and descriptive epistemology. ... This clearly reflected in his theory of evaluation. Campbell can be viewed as a first-stage theorist, emphasizing the search for truth about effective solutions to social problems. The first generation of evaluation theories arose in the United States in the 1960’s, a period in which the cost of large federal programs were rapidly growing and there was a perceived need for evaluation. First-stage theorist stressed epistemological and methodological standards for evaluation logic and practice. ... Campbell did not clarify in what ways he thought evaluation results should be put into use, for example. Campbell believed that the evaluator was to restrict him/herself to monitoring how results were actually used.