Evaluation Roundup - March 2021

Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest.

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New and Noteworthy — Reads

Applying Evaluation Criteria Thoughtfully

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet) laid out six evaluation criteria to support consistent, high-quality evaluation in the early 2000s. However, there was never a document to help evaluators and others understand these criteria and improve their use. OECD just released Applying Evaluation Criteria Thoughtfully. This document is meant to explore the criteria in detail by explaining what they are and how they are meant to be used.

Tools and Tips for Implementing Contribution Analysis

The Centre for Evaluation Innovation recently published a quick guide for implementing contribution analysis. The guide outlines what contribution analysis is and the six steps practitioners can take to implement it. The author also outlines challenges they have seen when conducting these types of evaluations and some ideas of how to mitigate those challenges. As always, the Centre for Evaluation Innovation has provided a very simple, practical document to help guide your practice.

Indigenous Made in Africa Evaluation Frameworks

The most recent American Journal of Evaluation published this article by Bagele Chilisa and Donna M. Mertens. This article discusses how issues of culture, ethics, and values from an Indigenous paradigm perspective have largely been ignored by international agencies when framing evaluations. This article describes an “Indigenous paradigmatic framework and then narrows the focus to a Made in Africa approach to evaluation that is designed to redress the epistemic violence perpetrated by the use of a Western Cultural lens to determine evaluation approaches.”

Using Twitter Data for Development Research and Evaluation

The World Bank and IEG staff shared their experience in a webinar using sentiment analysis (including using Twitter data) as a tool for collecting data for development research and evaluation. This article is a summary of the lessons from that webinar. If you are interested in using social media data for data collection, this is a good high-level overview of the benefits, opportunities, and risks.

New and Noteworthy — Events

A Conversation on Evaluative Thinking: A discussion with Chari Smith (Evaluation into Action) and Hayat Askar (EvalJordan)

Organized by: Evaluation into Action and EvalJordan 

Date: April 9; 9:00-10:00am (Pacific Standard Time) 

Facilitator: Chari Smith and Hayat Askar 

Using Art in Creative Data Collection and Evaluation

Organized by: Canadian Evaluation Society 

Date: April 15; 12:00-1:00pm (Eastern Daylight Time) 

Facilitators: Jennica Nichols and Maya Lefkowich 

Decolonizing ‘Development’ Evaluation

Organized by: Virginia Tech 

Date: April 15; 12:00-1:00pm (Eastern Time) 

Speaker: Candice Morkel  

Evaluation for Transformative Change

Organized by: Tamarack Institute  

Dates: April 20, 22, 27 and 29 

Facilitators: Michael Quinn Patton and Mark Cabaj 

Courses

Most Significant Change

Instructor: Clear Horizon Academy 

Start Date: April 16, 2021 

Evaluation Systems Change and Place-Based Approaches 

Instructor: Clear Horizon Academy 

Start Date: May 21, 2021 

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Social Network Analysis and Evaluation: Learnings From the Evaluator and the Client