There is a growing call for evaluation capacity building (ECB); although the area currently lacks a rich research base, there are few robust methods and practice through which to define it. The argument in this article is that the impact of evaluation is mediated by program stakeholders' engagement in evaluation activities. This mediation…

The interest and effort in evaluation capacity building (ECB) continues to grow enormously among organizations, funders, and evaluators. Yet a research synthesis of the ECB literature (Labin, Duffy, Meyers, Wandersman, & Lesesne, 2012) revealed major limitations in the science and practice of ECB. This forum on ECB, which includes two past…

This article describes the process by which we created a recruitment protocol for engaging adolescent sexual assault victims in a qualitative evaluation study. Working in collaboration with forensic nurses, rape victim advocates, adolescent rape survivors, and our institutional review board (IRB), we created a prospective recruitment method…

This article describes lessons learned about implementing evaluations in hospital settings. In order to overcome the methodological dilemmas inherent in this environment, we used a practical participatory evaluation (P-PE) strategy to engage as many stakeholders as possible in the process of evaluating a clinical demonstration project.…

This essay engages questions of evaluator role and indigenous peoples participation in evaluation within colonial and decolonization contexts. Specifically, I critique the Western emphasis on cultural competence and contrast the utility of "mainstream" evaluation approaches alongside three indigenous inquiry models (Te Kotahitanga,…

Participatory evaluation approaches have a relatively long history of advocacy and application in the international development evaluation community. Despite widespread use and apparent resonance with practitioners and donors alike, very little empirical research exists on why and how participatory evaluation approaches are used in international…

In the contentious debate over the use of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in education research, little attention has been given to how methodological issues arise and/or are resolved in the implementation of random assignment. Following a review of the methodological-theoretical literature on RCTs and alternative research designs, this article…

This paper reviews empirical research on the use of evaluation from 1986 to 2005 using Cousins and Leithwood's 1986 framework for categorizing empirical studies of evaluation use conducted since that time. The literature review located 41 empirical studies of evaluation use conducted between 1986 and 2005 that met minimum quality standards. The…

Evaluation researchers and practitioners acknowledge that involving stakeholders in the planning and implementation of an evaluation increases buy-in, understanding, and use. With the recent increase in multi-site evaluations of large federal programs, evaluators must think differently about how to encourage meaningful collaboration by…

While participatory evaluation (PE) constitutes an important trend in the field of evaluation, its ontology has not been systematically analyzed. As a result, the concept of PE is ambiguous and inadequately theorized. Furthermore, no existing instrument accurately measures stakeholder participation. First, this article attempts to overcome these…

This article addresses the design and application of a hotline to promote broader community-wide participation in a public school evaluation. Evaluations of community resources such as public schools present evaluators with challenges from the perspective of promoting stakeholder involvement. Although many evaluation stakeholders are readily…

This article is concerned with the underpinnings of practical participatory evaluation (PPE). Evaluation approaches have long been criticized because their results are often not used. It is believed that PPE addresses this drawback. The article focuses on the mechanisms underlying the links between activities and consequences in PPE. A PPE theory…

The purpose of this article is to describe a new collaborative immersion approach for developing evaluation capacity that was used in kindergarten through Grade 12 (K-12) schools and to place this new approach on a continuum of existing capacity-building methods. The continuum extends from individualistic training-oriented methods to collaborative…

The client of a student evaluation team has requested that the evaluators provide confidential identifying information gathered in the course of the evaluation. Here, the authors consider their response to the client's request. Specifically, they draw from professional principles developed to guide ethical decision making for evaluators and…

Evaluators are often faced with many challenges in the design and implementation of a program's evaluation. Because programs are entangled in complex networks of structures and stakeholders, they can be challenging to understand, and they often pose issues of competing and conflicting goals. However, by using a systems mapping approach to…