L’évaluateur éthiquement engagé

Sur le sens et la pertinence d’un nouveau référentiel

Abstract

The concept of an evaluator’s “commitment,” also referred to as “advocacy” in the English literature and “plaidoyer” in the French literature, remains a subject of debate within the evaluation community. As evaluators, should we ban all forms of personal commitment to preserve the “neutrality” of our evaluations? Instead, should we commit ourselves to increasing the quality of evaluations, or to promoting certain values? What forms of commitment should then be recommended? Through a literature review, we attempt to clarify the different understandings underlying the use of this concept, and we examine how recent epistemological and moral changes in the field of evaluation have greatly amplified its meaning and its implications for the practice. We suggest that an “ethical commitment” may have a methodological and/or moral purpose, and that, ethical or not, the evaluator’s commitment is inevitably present throughout the evaluation process.