Toward the justification of claims in evaluation research

Four types of claims generally arise in evaluation research: research claims, policy claims, evaluation claims, and management claims. The relationships among these types of claims can be seen both in the similarity of the questions under the types, and in their inlerrelatedness in making evaluation recommendations. By construing these claims as question-answer propositions, it is possible to identify the specific kinds of questions associated with each of the four types of claims. Under this view, evaluation research is predominantly a form of applied inquiry, and the justification of evaluation claims becomes the validation of question-answer propositions.