survival of the fittest

the tendency of individuals that are better adapted to a particular environment to be more successful at surviving and producing offspring. This concept is inherent in the theory of evolution by natural selection, as proposed in the 1850s by British naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913). See also competition for resources; Darwinian fitness; social Darwinism. [coined by Herbert Spencer in Principles of Biology (1864) and adopted by Darwin as a synonym for natural selection in the fifth edition of his Origin of Species (1869, Chapter 4)]

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Psychology term of the day

December 19th 2024

qualitative evaluation

an evaluation method that yields narratives gathered primarily from unstructured methods of data collection, naturalistic observation, and existing records. As an initial or divergent phase of program evaluation, it seeks to allow maximum opportunity to frame evaluation objectives. This approach is usually associated with a goal-free evaluation rather than a goal-based evaluation. Compare quantitative evaluation.