Problems in Evaluating Costs and Benefits of Social Programs
本文讨论了1960-70年代美国社会立法推动下项目评估的发展，重点分析了成本效益分析等评估方法在实际应用中遇到的障碍及克服途径。
The wave of domestic social legislation of the 1960s and early 1970s that led to community action programs, measures for reducing racial segregation and sex discrimination, compensatory education, manpower training, and public health initiatives also pushed federal human services expenditures to a FY 1980 level of $336.2 billion.' The same phenomenon was responsible for the creation of the profession of evaluation. Many legislators favor this development, for it offers the possibility of making more rational decisions about social welfare policies and more objective and efficient allocations of public expenditures. On the management side, the current climate of retrenchment gives a new and additional significance to evaluation. Some managers now see it as a means of prioritizing spending reductions and protecting the best programs from unwise funding cuts and consolidation into block grants. The discipline, both in government agencies and in the consulting firms performing work under government contract, developed in a fashion similar to that of during World War II. Like operations research in its formative years, program evaluation is eclectic, empirical, and welcomes to its ranks researchers of widely varying perspectives and formal training. Two of the most popular approaches to studying impact have been adaptations of the pre-treatment vs. post-treatment and / or treatment-versus-control studies of the behavioral scientist and the cost-benefit analyses of the economist.2 In the pre-post study, preprogram data and post-program data are gathered on relevant variables and compared. In the cost-benefit study, costs and dollar value of benefits are compared. Although some fruitful has been produced, severe real-world obstacles have also been encountered. The remainder of this article will discuss some of these obstacles to effective evaluation, and ways of overcoming them.