Evaluation of a Program to Strengthen Civil Society: The Basis, Conception and Methods of Scientific Accompanying Research for the CIVITAS Program, Part 1

Abstract

This paper describes experiences from an ongoing research project comprising the evaluation of the current CIVITAS program against right-wing extremism and xenophobia in the five new (German) federal states. The article introduces the analytic approach and methods of the accompanying evaluation research against the background of an existing set of complex and demanding general conditions. We critically reflect these conditions, which have led to profitable research in certain recent topics such as analyses of measures for developing commitment in „civil society“ to face right-wing extremism in communities.

There is also a focus on the relations between differing expectations of the involved „stakeholders“, concerning the form of evaluation results (presentable „result quality“ and formative „process quality“) as well as the capacities (possibilities and limits) of the evaluation approach. This paper will show the steps that were taken in order to answer these questions in the course of our work and in order to find an adequate solution to the challenges of this task. The second part of this paper, including the first results of this evaluation, will be presented in the following journal.