To be effective, your evaluative essay must do more than present a straightforward report of criteria, evidence, and judgments. It should help readers understand your subject in a particular way and show them that you’ve chosen appropriate criteria and evidence. Equally important, your essay should prove to your readers that you’ve based your judgments on sound and thorough reasoning and that you’ve conducted a balanced evaluation.

Explain your criteria. Criteria are an essential part of any evaluation. Your readers should understand not only what your criteria are but also why you’ve selected them. In some cases, you can rely on general knowledge to supply the rationale for your choice of one or more of your criteria. If you were evaluating an advertising campaign for a new soft drink, for example, you could probably rely on a widespread understanding that sales figures are an important factor in the evaluation. Similarly, you wouldn’t need to justify your use of nutrition and weight loss in an evaluation of diet programs.

In most cases, however, you should define your criteria explicitly. For example, if you were evaluating a new state program that encourages high school students to take additional driver education courses after receiving their licenses, you might use criteria such as teenagers’ willingness to sign up for the courses and the effectiveness of the program. But how would you define a criterion such as effectiveness? In the context of continuing education courses for newly licensed drivers, it might mean lowering the number of accidents attributable to inexperience, or preventing injuries or deaths associated with teenage drivers, or increasing drivers’ awareness of the problems caused by distraction or impatience, or some combination of these factors. Your readers should understand how you’ve defined your criteria so that they can follow — and, ideally, accept — your evaluation.

Support your judgments with evidence. Providing evidence to explain the reasoning behind your judgments helps readers accept your evaluation as valid and carefully thought out. Evidence can also help deepen your discussion of the overall results of your evaluation. In general, you’ll want to apply evidence to each of your criteria to show readers how your subject measures up. You can also use evidence to

Whether you draw your evidence from print, broadcast, or electronic sources or from field research, be sure to identify your sources. Evaluative essays typically rely on citation systems such as those provided by the Modern Language Association and the American Psychological Association to identify sources. If you are unsure about which citation system to use, consult your instructor. (You can read more about how to use evidence to support your evaluation in Chapter 14.)

Be fair. To be effective, your evaluation must be fair. The notion of fairness is sometimes confused with objectivity. In fact, being truly objective is difficult — and perhaps impossible. Each writer approaches an evaluation with a particular set of experiences, values, and beliefs that lead to a particular outlook on a subject. These differences among writers — even the most disciplined and rigorous — lead to minor and sometimes major differences in their judgments, even when they work with the same criteria and evidence. Being fair and reasonable, as a result, does not necessarily mean coming to the same conclusion as another writer. Instead, it means taking the time to consider different points of view, weighing evidence carefully, and being as consistent in your judgments as possible.

One way to ensure fairness is to provide a context for your evaluation. By making it clear to your readers what you’ve evaluated, what you’ve considered during the evaluation process, and how you’ve approached the evaluation process, you can help them understand how and why you’ve come to your conclusions. If a reviewer has concerns about the size of a new phone, for example, she might point out that she has small hands or that she prefers to send texts using one hand. By providing context, you’ll increase the likelihood that your readers will view your evaluation as sound and well supported.