Undergraduate certificate in community ‐based assessment and evaluation
We describe the impetus for starting CBAE, its philosophical orientation and curricular requirements, our available resources, and the challenges we faced in ensuring its successful implementation. Through dogged determination and a commitment to our students and our surrounding communities, CBAE has emerged as a legitimate training ground for aspiring evaluators and an essential element to our institution's commitment to serving Mexican American students. We hope that reading our story will open educators to the idea that undergraduates are capable of achieving competence and that local communities benefit from the next g...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - May 25, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Rick Sperling,
Jessica M árquez‐Muñoz Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Integrating theory and research on structural racism and social justice into evaluator preparation
AbstractThis chapter discusses the relevance and role of structural racism and equity, critical race theory, and social justice perspectives in evaluation. We also suggest opportunities for formally educating the next generation of evaluators about ways to identify and address these topics in practice. One of the ways our field can remediate a long history of relegating the importance of these topics is by revamping evaluator training with expanded pedagogy that includes self-reflection about positionality, and experiential activities aimed at cultivating evaluators who are better equipped to address pressing justice, disp...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - May 25, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Jennifer Villalobos,
Katrina L. Bledsoe,
Stewart I. Donaldson Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Matching program complexity with institutional funding realities in democracy, human rights, and governance program evaluation
AbstractThis chapter introduces the evaluative perspective of a funder – the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – that advances a portfolio of highly diverse and multifaceted democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) projects. The chapter explores the underlying political character of democracy assistance work – which is therefore viewed by some as partis an – and second, the variable dynamic forces intrinsic to complex operating contexts, both of which affect how the NED is able to both standardize and provide flexibility in grantee evaluation. This analysis draws attention to the challenges and opportunit...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 11, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Rebekah Usatin,
Georges Fauriol Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Issue Information
(Source: New Directions for Evaluation)
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Tags: ISSUE INFORMATION Source Type: research
Editors ’ note
(Source: New Directions for Evaluation)
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Alysson Akiko Oakley,
Kate Krueger Tags: EDITORIAL Source Type: research
Equitable evaluation in remote and sensitive spaces
AbstractDemocracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) programs work in environments where there are actors that actively undermine program goals, environments with conflict or war, situations where program management is physically distant from program implementation, contexts where target communities live with little or no internet or mobile phone connectivity, and where stakeholders are subject to intimidation and violence. As a result, DRG program monitoring and evaluation activities must apply principles from the Equitable Evaluation Framework ™, to meaningfully engage program staff and participants to mitigate risks ...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Megan Guidrey,
Emily Bango,
Amelia Ayoob Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Made in Africa: Understanding Indigenous African approaches to democracy, human rights, and governance evaluation through the study of proverbs
AbstractThe African Evaluation Association (AfrEA) plays a unique role as the pan-Africa umbrella organization of African Voluntary Organizations for Professional Development (VOPEs). This chapter is in a self-interview format with the former Chief of AfrEA Secretariat and discusses an AfrEA initiative calledMade in Africa Evaluation (MAE). Part of MAE considers how Indigenous African proverbs contribute to improved evaluation practices in the African context. This interview discusses the approach to the use of proverbs with reference to democracy assistance, human rights, and governance programs (DRG). (Source: New Directions for Evaluation)
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: S îm‐Yassah Awilêlo Badjo Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Evaluating programming that thinks and works politically: Challenges and emerging practice
This article describes several of the core challenges to evaluation of TWP and also a rubric of considerations for more effective evaluation practices in this emerging field. (Source: New Directions for Evaluation)
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: David Jacobstein,
Sarah Swift Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Humanizing human rights evaluation: Integrating human rights principles to maintain methodological rigor, axiological commitments, and epistemic justice
AbstractWhat evaluation criteria are appropriate to assess the relevance and efficacy of rights-based initiatives? In this chapter, the author argues that evaluations of rights-based programs must themselves espouse human rights principles, and methodological decisions must be assessed against these principles. The design and implementation of the evaluation must thereby promote the dignity, liberty, and equality for and of participants. Against these criteria, top-down evaluation approaches are often inappropriate or insufficient for the evaluation of rights-based programs. The chapter discusses how many evaluations use t...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Giovanni P. Dazzo Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Evaluating a woman's leadership journey and impact by adapting contribution mapping and analysis tools
AbstractComplexity manifests in no clearer arena than women's political leadership and overall empowerment. The nature of the leadership journey, comprised of multiple events and milestones, paired with environmental factors like COVID-19, adds to this complexity. This chapter tackles the challenges of measuring program impact in advancing women's leadership by discussing the Vital Voices Global Partnership (VVGP) approach. Using an adapted contribution mapping and analysis tool, VVGP identified contributions at three levels: programmatic, individual, and community. The tool allowed VVGP to collect evidence about VVGP's co...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Alejandra Garcia Diaz Villamil,
Rodrigo Santos Legaspi,
Ophelia Delali A. Akoto Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Evaluation amidst crisis: Voices of Ukrainian DRG evaluators
AbstractThis chapter focuses on the lived experiences of Ukrainian evaluators currently working amidst political, economic, and social crises. Eight Ukrainian evaluators and evaluation users – drawing from various DRG and DRG-related programs – were interviewed by Zoom or responded in written form to chapter authors to provide insights to a series of questions regarding how they operate today, and how their priorities and perspectives regarding evaluation have or have not changed. T heir responses were summarized by the two main authors. The chapter also provides a background of a DRG program that had to pivot during C...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Olena Rybiy,
Roland Kovats Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Nimble adaptation: Tailoring monitoring, evaluation, and learning methods to provide actionable data in complex environments
AbstractThis chapter examines good practices in implementing effective Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems within complex international development Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) programs, which are characterized by challenges of non-linearity, limited evidence of theories of change, and contextual and politically contingent nature of outcomes. The chapter presents three cases of MEL systems in complex projects implemented by Pact across distinct and diverse operating contexts – Zimbabwe, Cambodia, and Somalia – to illustrate those projects’ MEL approaches that enabled continuous adaptat...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Lauren Serpe,
Mason Ingram,
Kate Byom Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Theory amidst complexity – using process tracing in ex‐post evaluations
AbstractEvaluators who take a complexity-aware approach must consider tradeoffs related to theoretical parsimony, falsifiability, and measurement validity. These tradeoffs may be particularly pronounced with ex-post evaluation designs in which program theory development and monitoring frameworks are often completed before the evaluator is engaged. In this chapter, we argue that theory-based evaluation (TBE) approaches can address unique ex-post evaluation challenges that complexity-aware evaluation (CAE) alone cannot, and that these two sets of approaches are complimentary. We will outline strategies that evaluators may us...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Kate Krueger,
Molly Wright Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Challenging democracy, human rights, and governance evaluation capacity development through a transformative lens
AbstractDemocracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) evaluation practice faces diverse challenges, not only because of the complexity of intervention designs and implementation but also due to the complexity of the fragile contexts in which DRG evaluation is generally applied. Evaluating in fragile contexts demands responsiveness to the complexity and provides challenges to define what capacities and competencies a DRG evaluator should have. In 2019, the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE) was funded to design a set of tools to develop individual and institutional DRG evaluation capacities in a...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Claudia Olavarria,
Donna M. Mertens Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
“Politics is more difficult than physics”: Complexity and the challenge of democracy, human rights, and governance program evaluation
AbstractWhat is democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) program evaluation? This chapter defines the subfield, outlines major challenges to undertaking evaluation in highly politicized programming environments, and orients its current state with respect to its historical trajectory. The author describes the pendulum swings DRG evaluation has undergone in methodology, paradigms, and interests, organized into four generations: the Cowboys, the Technocratic Disenchantment, the Messy Middle, and the Complexity Crew. The chapter describes how the concept of complexity came to dominate the subfield, emerging out of the imp...
Source: New Directions for Evaluation - February 10, 2023 Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Alysson Akiko Oakley Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
