Mixed motives in the kitchen--current recipes for improving quality of care.

Program evaluation is a new field vested with high and often unrealistic and conflicting expectations from many quarters. Instead of being clear and realistic, evaluators have tended to react blindly to the various demands, compounding the confusion by engaging in unproved, even potentially counterproductive, efforts. A more constructive type of evaluation is needed--a cooperative enterprise in which information is obtained as a service for a client, with his full and meaningful participation in designing the evaluation and in the interpretation and implementation of the results.