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'The Science of Evaluation deserves to be widely read and discussed. In a literature that often struggles to be lucid, accessible and engaging, writing with clarity, honesty and passion, Pawson thoughtfully outlines how evaluation research can embrace a realist perspective without fearing it will lose its methodological ardour'

This work provides a real breakthrough. It teaches us to appreciate the hugely varied interactions that can occur when our policy interventions are inserted into the complex environments in which we live. More importantly, it teaches us how to extract general lessons from the diverse occurrences we observe in various policy settings, so that we can have a better understanding and better results in the future.
Nancy Cartwright
Professor of Philosophy, University of California San Diego

Pawson calls for an endless journey into evaluation, organised with interventiontheories as the unit of analysis, so as to generate a phalanx of middle-range researchprogrammes. His second suggestion is for maintaining an ever-shifting and improvingmiddle ground that can only be achieved collectively and through constant criticalscrutiny of each other’s work. Thus his hope is that ideas and problems raised inthis book will stimulate and encourage more research about the scientific status ofevaluation.

The Science of Evaluation is a key text for anyone interested in research in the social sciences. It is a brilliant book which will justifiably become a fixture on students’ reading lists, as it brings together in one place Pawson’s thinking and ideas in relation to Realist Evaluation.