Empowerment evaluation as a social work strategy

This article explores the application of empowerment strategies to program evaluation within a community health setting and presents a case study to examine the policy, direct practice, and research issues associated with the plan to evaluate a community-based HIV-prevention program. Empowerment evaluation strategies were used to develop an innovative street outreach intervention that can be measured and evaluated, to transfer evaluation knowledge from the researcher-expert to the program stakeholders, and to help overcome evaluation implementation obstacles. The article addresses the benefits and risks inherent in an empowerment approach to the evaluative research process.