Given Hapunda

134 2. Look for rules that provide guidance. 3. Examine how the situation looks in terms of basic ethical principles: autonomy (right involved), non-maleficence (doing no harm), beneficence (doing good), justice (fairness) and fidelity (adhere to agreement). 4. Examine your personal values in a order to be in touch with your personal beliefs and comfort levels. 5. Efforts can include consulting with colleagues, calculating trade-offs, and making and following the plan. Politics and Evaluation Morra-Imas & Rist (2008) argues that evaluation is always carried out in a political context; the mere fact that an evaluation is being conducted may be used to advance a personal or institutional agenda. There is evidence that researchers and indeed evaluators sometimes push a set of findings to further their own political purpose (Focus Box.6). Politics influence evaluation in a number of ways including: (1) programmes and policies are results of political decisions so evaluations implicitly judge those decisions: (2) evaluations feed political decision- making and compete with other perspectives in the political process (national or local government level) and: (3) evaluation is inherently political by its very nature because of the issues it addresses and the conclusions it reaches (Patton, 2008). So then, how can evaluators maintain their integrity if they are involved in close, collaborative relationships with stakeholders? How does the evaluator take politics into account without becoming a political tool of only one partisan interest? Thus, according to Patton (2008), evaluators find themselves on the proverbial horns of a dilemma whereby getting too close to decision- Focus Box 6: Influence of Politics on Evaluation Patton (2008: 555) in his book “Utilization focused evaluation narrates how a host government influenced the valuation of the programme. Note that some of the issues here also relate to the issues of competence, integrity and honesty discussed above: Patton recently had a length exchange with an evaluator who was disturbed by having just come back from a mid-term site visit of a large and important but controversial project funded by an international agency in a developing country. All sites visited were selected by the host government. Only project participants selected by the host government were interviewed and always with a project and/or government people present. Most requested documents were not available…Patton, (2008)