Today at the AEA conference, I had one of those great moments where ideas from one session combine with comments in another to suddenly go ‘click’ . Generalists or specialists There has been an ongoing discussion in evaluation about whether … Continue reading
The comments shared in response to the earlier post, Culturally Competent Needs Assessment By An “Outsider” raise issues that are critical to the discipline of evaluation. Two things come to mind; a) reflections on how we define evaluation theory, and … Continue reading
Fad or real progress? Useful concept or distracting buzzword? Michael Patton ‘s new book “Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use” goes beyond the theory and the jargon to present many, many examples that show the practicality and value of complexity approaches to evaluation.
How do we find out whether programs, projects and policies have really made a difference? Given the complex array of other influences on the outcomes, is it all too hard? Jane and I have been doing some separate thinking and writing about this. Putting these together has produced a new map of the issues which might be very useful.
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Jane at Real Evaluation
Patricia at CIRCLE (RMIT)