Organizers:
Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Heitmeyer / Dr. Olaf Lobermeier / PD Dr. Rainer Strobl

In the past years the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence and proVal in Hannover have conducted evaluations of several programs designed to curb right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism and strengthen democratic values and norms in Germany. Meanwhile, all major programs in this area are subject to evaluation and considerable progress has been made in analysis and assessment. However, it is still difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible to measure the effects of activities. As a result the benefit of many activities and sometimes of the programs as a whole is contested.

We see three main difficulties in this area of evaluation:

	Classical experimental or quasi-experimental designs for the assessment of outcomes are rarely used.
	The results of alternative approaches are often unconvincing for stakeholders and the public.
	The utilization of evaluation results by both practitioners and government authorities is often unsatisfactory.

The outlined problems affect wide areas of evaluation, but they are especially prominent for the aforementioned programs. We really need innovative approaches that link academic research and practical work and are able to guarantee high standards for evaluation in difficult contexts. In some other countries there has been a much longer discussion of these issues and interesting ideas and strategies have been developed. The aim of the conference is to provide an opportunity for the exchange of ideas that could be extremely valuable for the specific evaluation work outlined above and for German evaluation research as a whole.