About Pluralistic Evaluation

Where does the Pluralistic Evaluation Framework come from?

Inspiration

The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework (PEF) is based on insights from Reformational philosophy.  This philosophical tradition emphasizes the multi-aspectual, many-layered nature of reality. 

The basic idea is that “reality is meaning”, and this meaningfulness is many-sided.  From basic mathematical aspects through ecological, cognitive and communal to ideological aspects, we build up complementary perspectives on the world.  Such aspects are evident in the plurality of academic disciplines, which are to be seen as complementary to each other.

For more information about Reformational philosophy, see the directory of resources at www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk .

History

The framework has been under development by a team of researchers since 2018.  To date, it has been piloted with groups of governmental and non-governmental policymakers in the U.K.  The main focus has been environmental policy, but the framework is also applicable to social and economic policy, and business projects. 

The integrative nature of the PEF encourages dialogue across traditional policy boundaries, making it an ideal tool for sustainable development.

Reference

The PEF is documented in an open-access journal article:

Gunton RM, Basden A, Hejnowicz AP, van Asperen E, Christie I, Hanson DR, Hartley SE (2022) Valuing beyond economics: a pluralistic evaluation framework for participatory policy-making. Ecological Economics 196:107420

What is the Pluralistic Evaluation Framework?

The basics

The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework is essentially a tool for considering diverse kinds of goodness in the design and evaluation of policies.  It is based on the view that there is a plurality of kinds of goodness, among which a good policy ought to aim for a balance that accounts for the interests of diverse stakeholders.

Given a complex situation to improve, how can a policy be democratically justified as good use of funds? The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework (PEF) recognises a spectrum of distinct aspects in which to analyse and improve the situation.  These aspects help to define systems and processes that the policy is designed to influence, but the focus of the Framework is the values that may be attributed to the situation: a plurality of kinds of goodness that should be considered.  These “goods” exist in relationship to stakeholders who should be consulted so that their priorities may be taken into account, and options and scenarios can be explored to make the policy maximally acceptable. 

A better way to value

The “good vs. bad” distinction is primary in human interpretation of entities and situations.  It can be theoretically analysed and refracted into a multiplicity of values described by these aspects.  The first four aspects are taken as foundational and not intrinsically value-bearing.  Values become salient from the biotic aspect onwards, and progressively more culturally variable towards the  top of the diagram.  Ultimate values are highly variable and they partially control the values that people hold and attribute lower down the scale.

The PEF does not provide a final metric for arriving at decisions or overall evaluation, because the challenge of integrating the diverse interests of stakeholders and the plurality of forms of goodness is ultimately a political one.  The PEF is a decision-support tool rather than a decision-making tool.  It can be combined with a multicriteria evaluation tool (see links below) to arrive at a decision.

Where does it fit?

The PEF fits with the following principles and theories:

How can it be combined?

The PEF can readily be integrated with the following frameworks:

Please contact us to talk about connecting the PEF to other tools and frameworks.

What next?

If you’ve used the PEF, please let us know! This will help us evidence the value and impact of the framework and feed into its future development.

Future plans include refining the presentation of categories, and developing a text analysis tool for policy and corporate documents.

Acknowledgments

The Pluralistic Evaluation Framework was developed under a project of the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) by a team comprising Richard Gunton (University of Winchester), Adam Hejnowicz (University of Newcastle), Sue Hartley (University of Sheffield) and Ian Christie (University of Surrey). Funding came from ESRC (large centre grant ES/N012550/1), now part of UKRI.