Positive Thinking Evaluation e Survey Research. Una proposta di contaminazione

The paper is part of a research on the evaluation of participatory practices and engagement activities of the donors of the Distance Support Service (DSS) of the Association Famiglie Nuove (Afn) Onlus. The theoretical framework of the survey is based on the Positive Thinking Approaches, a family of approaches that have in common the idea that «we learn more from success than from failure». In this direction, the use of an evaluative perspective open to the «discovery» of successes, aimed at identifying the main changes in the DSS sector (such as relational proximity and openness towards the educational community), made it possible to build the steps of the research in a participated way, by interacting the needs of the operators with the needs for change expressed by the donors involved in the survey.