Evaluation practices are continuing to evolve, particularly in those areas related to formative, participatory, and improvement approaches. Improvement science is one of the evaluative practices. Its strength is that it seeks to embrace stakeholders' and frontline workers' knowledge and experience, who are often tasked with leading improvement…

Expert intuition is increasingly considered to be a valid form of knowledge, and research has proven its effectiveness in judgment and decision making in various fields. Theorists seem to recognize the contributions of intuition within evaluative practice, but it has never been well-documented. This article presents a study on expert intuition,…

The concept of power is a complex and often intangible aspect of the evaluation process that is frequently a focal topic among the conceptual evaluation literature concerning collaborative or culturally responsive evaluation (CRE) contexts. Unfortunately, there remains a significant theory to practice gap as power is often rarely addressed or…

Many organizations now have evaluation policies. Because formal evaluation policies intend to frame evaluation practice, it is important to understand the aims of policies and their influence on practice. Evaluation theory is also intended to guide practice; therefore, the extent to which policies are informed by theory is also important to…

In a complex, multisite initiative, a well-developed theory of change can help an organization's leadership make strategic decisions about program elements, organizational direction and priorities, as well as provide structure and accountability for evaluation. This article describes the multistep process used by the evaluation team of a large…

This article is the fifth in a series on the relationship of evaluation theory and practice. It was commissioned by the Eastern Evaluation Research Society and the American Evaluation Association as part of The Chelimsky Forum, launched in 2013 to honor Eleanor Chelimsky, one of the most influential and respected program evaluators of our era, and…

George Grob presented the fifth and final Eleanor Chelimsky Forum address at the 2017 annual meeting of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society. In this commentary, I respond to several points that George raises in the "American Journal of Evaluation" paper based on that address. An overarching theme of my comments involves the potential…

To explore the relationship between theory and practice in evaluation, we focus on the perspectives and experiences of student evaluators, as they move from the classroom to an engagement with the social, political, and cultural dynamics of evaluation in the field. Through reflective journals, postcourse interviews, and facilitated group…

Research on evaluation theories, methods, and practices has increased considerably in the past decade. Even so, little is known about whether published findings from research on evaluation are read by evaluators and whether such findings influence evaluators' thinking about evaluation or their evaluation practice. To address these questions, and…

In this commentary I discuss how Getting to Outcomes and other empowerment strategies have potential to contribute to a theory of evaluation practice, address the epistemology of quality improvement, and inform the external validity of outcome evaluations.

Since April 2013, the Eleanor Chelimsky Forum has served as the centerpiece of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society's (EERS) annual conference. Eleanor Chelimsky (2012), a highly esteemed pioneer in the evaluation field, inspired the Forum in her 2012 plenary address (subsequently published in "American Journal of Evaluation"…

It is argued here that the general view, especially in the social sciences, of the specific status of evaluation is still deeply impregnated with completely absurd misrepresentations. A number of the worst are documented and refuted here, along with some suggestions as to their roots. It is stressed that the consequences of this tangled net of…

Despite bipartisan support in Washington, DC, which dates back to the mid-1990s, the "what works" approach has yet to gain broad support among policymakers and practitioners. One way to build such support is to increase the usefulness of program impact evaluations for these groups. We describe three ways to make impact evaluations more…

Performance measurement has gained increased importance in the nonprofit sector, and contemporary literature is populated with numerous performance measurement frameworks. In this article, we seek to accomplish two goals. First, we review contemporary models of nonprofit performance measurement to develop an integrated framework in order to…

Evaluation theories can be tested in various ways. One approach, the experimental analogue study, is described and illustrated in this article. The approach is presented as a method worthy to use in the pursuit of what Alkin and others have called descriptive evaluation theory. Drawing on analogue studies conducted by the first author, we…