Any time the necessity arises to take a decision on a programme or a service this is evaluation time. Generally speaking we can identify three classical stages of evaluation:
- ex ante evaluation, i.e. before deciding whether to start a new programme or service in order to determine its worth and whether costs are proportioned to expected benefits, to identify any undesired effects of the future decision through approximation of reasonable hypotheses, collection of relevant data, official documents and comparisons with similar experiences (this stage has organizational and programming functions rather than of control, decision and knowledge like the following ones);
- in itinere evaluation, i.e. during the process, in order to correct any possible mistakes or to adjust the programme or service to environmental changes, to check whether daily practices allow to keep the pace with initial objectives, to implement better organizational solutions and give a more efficient response, to avoid any undesired side effects (so called perverted effects) and fight them;
- ex post evaluation, i.e. at the end, to learn from experience and understand what happened; this is the most precious stage of evaluation for its important role of analysis and comprehension, information and training, and has several aspects depending on whether it is limited to the outcome of the action or includes its impact.
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