Ordering Value in Evaluation: Methods, Judgment, and Evaluative Practice

Evaluation is widely recognized as value-laden, but less attention has been given to how values are structured across the evaluation process. This article develops the concept of value ordering to describe how evaluation organizes relationships among values and priorities through inclusion, exclusion, prioritization, weighting, sequencing, combination, adjudication, and visibility across institutional, methodological, analytical, and judgmental levels.

The article examines how RCTs, realist evaluation, QCA, evidence synthesis, participatory approaches, and rubrics structure values in distinct ways. It then reinterprets QCA findings from Peace Corps small projects in Georgia, showing how multiple sufficient configurations can reflect different arrangements of program priorities.

The contribution is a framework for analyzing how evaluation structures value and for understanding evaluators as value framers. The framework does not eliminate value judgment, but makes the structuring of values more visible, contestable, and open to scrutiny.