This study is a case study of the motivation for and application of a theory-driven evaluation approach to a community development programme in South Africa. The motivation for a theory-based approach is explicated within the context of the inability of experimental or 'black box' designs to evaluation to provide the requisite information to programme implementers, programme managers as well as policy makers. It also argues that experimental design in evaluation has not lived up to its promise of producing systematic and robust evidence about the impact of projects or programmes. Instead, experimental designs have struggled to maintain the integrity of the designs and are fraught with deficiencies that influence the quality of the results.

The research context of a South Africa in the midst of political, economic and social transformation from 1994 to the present, is presented to highlight the complex challenges facing the country in terms of economic upliftment, poverty alleviation and social transformation. The need to evaluate the various interventions and initiatives through policy changes and development programme is then established. One such intervention, a community development programme initiated by the Centre for Community Development (CCD), is introduced as an example of an intervention with the objectives to deal with the challenges listed above.

The history and development of programme evaluation as an interdisciplinary, applied field of research are presented to illuminate the multiple purposes assigned to programme evaluation and to create the platform for further arguments for the use of a theory-based approach to evaluation. The history, growth and potential benefits of a theory-driven approach are shared as well as the barriers and critiques from various quarters. A meta-theoretical analysis of the philosophical debates about the paradigmatic choices available to researchers is used to construct the ontological, epistemological and methodological landscape that influences various orientations to research. It shows how different researchers interpret this landscape or framework and locates the theory-based approach to evaluation within a particular brand of realist ontology.

Community development is showcased in terms of its central concepts, that is 'community' and 'development'. These concepts, individually and their interconnections, are interrogated and explained for the purposes of generating a conceptual and theoretical framework that is used later in the analysis of the evaluation findings. The research context of the community development programme is then introduced and the evaluation findings are outlined and discussed. The analysis of the evaluation findings reveals the essence of the community development programme and provides guidance for further refinement of the theory-based approach.

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