Knowledge-scientific evaluation of community service systems

This paper proposes a knowledge-scientific approach to evaluation of community service systems from the viewpoints of knowledge creation, consciousness reform, and value co-creation. A concrete example of the community service system treated here is an education program for old men to find their reason for living after the retirement. After introducing this program and the traditional evaluation methods for such a program, the paper emphasizes the necessity of developing new evaluation methods for such a community service system based on knowledge science. The paper proposes a new evaluation framework and reports an actual evaluation result using the interview data from participants in that program.