Policy evaluation can be better defined as a process by which general judgments about quality, goal attainment, program effectiveness, impact, and costs can be determined. It is an assessment of whether a set of activities implemented under a specific policy has achieved a given set of objectives.
Once public policy has been operationalized through the formal adoption of laws, rules, or regulations, and the bureaucracy has taken action to implement the policy, some form of evaluation needs to be accomplished to determine if the policy has achieved the desired outcome or impact. Public policy represents the expenditure of limited public resources and or restrictions on certain types of individual or organizational behavior. Consequently, …show more content…

However, many other models focus their analysis on different objectives such as what is the true purpose of the evaluation, what is the role of the evaluator in the process, how broad or narrow should the scope of the evaluation be, and finally how should the evaluation be organized and conducted, for example what measurement instruments should be employed to determine success or failure. Four generic types of the most commonly used policy evaluation models were identified and they are: process evaluation, outcome evaluation, impact evaluation, and cost-benefit analysis.

Process evaluation as in its name implies this type of evaluation analyzes how well a policy or program is being administered. This type of evaluation is employed more often by program managers to determine what can be done to improve the implementation, the aspects of service delivery, of the program. It does not directly address whether or not the policy or program is achieving the desired outcome or impact on the target population.
Whereas outcomes are normally considered to be the impact that a policy has on a target population, for example, did the policy produce the desired behavioral change initially sought.
In this case, the outcome evaluation is concerned with outputs. For example, if the stated goal of a welfare policy is to reduce the number of people receiving welfare benefits then a determination is made to see if less people are receiving welfare benefits