Evaluation, assessment, and performance measurement are not what you’d call sciences. But these activities do share certain things in common with science and the scientific method.1 One is the requirement that theories be tested based on the compilation of objective evidence. Another is the idea of replication, which is carefully repeating a measurement or experiment in order to verify that the initial findings were not an accident or mistake of some sort.
Then there’s the more philosophical concept known as falsifiablity. A scientific theory needs to be such that there is some way that it can be examined and possibly disproved. A credible scientific theory is one that holds up under repeated attempts to be proven wrong.
In everyday terms, there is a lot of transparency and double-checking in science. I bring these ideas up because, as it happens, there is a claim made in my prior blog entry that needs rechecked. The claim is:
On the basis of per capita statistics, smaller U.S. public libraries out-perform the largest U.S. public libraries.
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1 Some of the foundational ideas in evaluation, assessment, and especially performance measurement have also been borrowed from the field of financial auditing. See Beryl Radin’s 2006 book, Challenging the Performance Movement: Accountability, Complexity, and Democratic Values and Michael Power’s 1997 book, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification.
