eParticipation Evaluation and Impact

This booklet investigates how to evaluate eParticipation. Our main objective is to identify the relevant elements of existing approaches to evaluation and to develop them on the basis of a coherent and comprehensive eParticipation evaluation framework. The document describes the key issues and questions that evaluation research must address, and presents a layered model of eParticipation evaluation, which includes three important perspectives (project, socio-technical, and democratic perspectives), related evaluation criteria, and possible research indicators and methods. The main factors that influence evaluation will be outlined and three general types of evaluation design discussed. Moreover, common methods used in evaluation research are described and some salient quality issues are addressed. Selected items from three case examples of evaluation research in this area are used to illustrate how different parts of our framework might operate in practice.