Evaluating performance of environmental health assessments

<accesscontrol>Members of projects,,Workshop2008,,beneris,,Erac,,Heimtsa,,Hiwate,,Intarese</accesscontrol>

This is a manuscript about evaluating performance of environmental health assessments. It emphasizes the importance of proper identification and explication of assessment purpose against which (and only which) the performance of the assessment can be evaluated. It also suggests a set of general properties of good assessments that can be used as the performance criteria of any kind of assessments.

Background

• societal context of assessments
• general purpose of assessments
  • to describe reality
    • fulfill specific need
• assessment products as information objects (artefacts)

Results

• properties of good assessments
  • quality of content
  • applicability
  • efficiency
• evaluation process
  • a priori and/or a posteriori view
  • identification of purpose
  • evaluation of quality of content (uncertainty + relevance)
    • in principle reality, but in practice golden standard as reference point
  • evaluation of applicability
  • evaluation of efficiency (effort expenditure)
  • overall performance
    • potential for effectiveness/effort given purpose
      • can be further evaluated retrospectively against realized effectiveness (possibly against redefined purpose)