Evidence-based Engagement
Harry Boyte (personal communication, 2007) argues convincingly that civic engagement is not just "an array of good deeds that can be simply enumerated, without qualitative differentiations", but instead that it is "a field of expanding research that needs to be employed in assessing the nature, quality, and impact of various forms of 'service' or 'voluntarism.' He continues
The most important point to make is that there is, in fact, an interdisciplinary field of public engagement, with parallels to other emergent fields in the past such as environmental studies or women’s studies. This makes “civic� or “public� engagement much richer and more intellectually rigorous than is suggested by simply a listing of voluntary and service activities. Indeed, advances in scholarship and research allow a good many distinctions and judgments. We know, for instance, a great deal about what kinds of experiential learning, pedagogies, and content make for robust, lasting civic and political engagements, knowledge, and inclinations. We also know a lot about what makes for effective deliberative processes in local communities and institutions, or sustained local civic culture change, or effective civic practice by professionals. Since the coin of the realm at research universities is the quality of research and knowledge generation and since special distinction goes to those who are seen as key innovators in important areas of human discovery, it would seem especially important to make the case that there is an important emergent field here…
I'm very much in sync with these sentiments (though I wouldn't totally dismiss well-done volunteering) and would like to see them taken even further. For example, practitioners of community-based participatory research should document their claims that it yields better results (better-designed studies, better subject recruitment, better compliance, more honest responses) than standard community-based research. Practitioners of engaged agricultural research might document—quantitatively rather than anecdotally—that it yields better crops, happier farm families, higher farm income per hour worked, less soil erosion, etc., than traditional agricultural extension work.
Evidence-based demonstrations of effective methodologies and outcomes are rightly expected in medicine, science, and other fields of research. Should publicly-engaged scholarship be held to lower standards?