• “Valutazione

[Autom. eng. transl.] Evaluation is "definable as a deliberate and socially organized act aimed at producing a value judgment" (Barbier, 1985, p. 34). According to Palumbo (2001, p. 48) "there is evaluation every time someone asks (to himself or an outsider) to judge an intentional action (planned, under construction or implemented) against some criteria and on the basis of relevant information ": from this point of view, it" is a cognitive activity aimed at attributing a (judgment of) value to an action - in our case: training - intentionally carried out or intended to be carried out, destined to produce external effects, which is based on research activities in the social sciences and which follows rigorous and codifiable procedures "(Palumbo, cit., p. 59). Therefore, evaluating a training intervention means reconstructing and giving value in an argued manner to changes in recipients and in their relevant contexts (for example an organization or territory) following training (which should have changed the starting situation); this activity also implies the reconstruction of the cognitive framework necessary to understand the changes that have occurred / have not occurred or the process. Thus understood, the evaluation presents three essential traits: it responds to specific evaluation questions relating to an equally specific evaluation; judges, through comparative mechanisms; explains and argues the assigned judgment.