Blue Marble Evaluation: Premises & Principles

By Michael Quinn Patton

Published by Guilford Press, 2019

As a transdisciplinary profession, evaluation has much to offer to global change interventions that work toward a sustainable future across national boundaries, sectors, and issues. This book introduces Blue Marble evaluation, which provides a framework for developing, adapting, and evaluating major systems change initiatives involving complex networks of stakeholders. Michael Quinn Patton demonstrates how the four overarching principles and 12 operating principles of this innovative approach allow evaluators, planners, and implementers to home in on sustainability and equity issues in an intervention. Compelling case examples, bulleted review lists, charts, and 80 original exhibits and graphics connect the global and local, the human and ecological. Rooted in utilization-focused, developmental, and principles-focused evaluation, Blue Marble evaluation is designed to tackle problems outside the reach of traditional evaluation practice.