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BLP TIG Week: Nichole Stewart and Laura Pryor On Connecting Performance Management to Program Evaluation

We are Nichole Stewart and Laura Pryor and we’d like to share a preview of our presentation at the upcoming AEA 2013 conference. Our session, Performance Management to Program Evaluation: Creating a Complimentary Connection, will use a case study of a Los Angeles-based juvenile offender reentry program to demonstrate how “information and knowledge production” can be coordinated for performance management (PM) and program evaluation (PE).

Lessons Learned: There IS a difference!

Distinguishing between PM and PE has historically presented challenges for program directors and the public agencies and non-profit organizations that fund them. Programs have to grapple with day-to-day operations as well as adapting to evolving frameworks for understanding “what works”—from results-based accountability to continuous quality improvement to evidence-based everything. Evaluators are frequently called upon to engage simultaneously in both PM and PE, however the distinctions between the tasks are not always clearly understood or articulated in practice.

Lessons Learned: There IS a connection!

Fortunately, several authors have explored the relationship between PM and PE and outlined how PM and PE can complement one another with regard to data collection and analysis:

  • Information complementarity– Use the same data to answer different questions based on different analyses (Kusek and Rist, 2004).
  • Methodical complementarity– Use similar processes and tools to collect and analyze data and ultimately convert data into actionable information (Nielsen and Ejler, 2008).

Rad Resources

StewartPryorGraph

Source: Child Trends, Research-to-Results Brief (January 2011)

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The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Business, Leadership and Performance (BLP) TIG Week with our colleagues in the BLP AEA Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our BLP TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Want to learn more from Nichole and Laura? They’ll be presenting as part of the Evaluation 2013 Conference Program, October 16-19 in Washington, DC.

1 thought on “BLP TIG Week: Nichole Stewart and Laura Pryor On Connecting Performance Management to Program Evaluation”

  1. Thanks Laura and Nicole! I was an evaluator in California for 13 years and have moved to performance management in Washington state. Even though evaluation is clearly called out in our performance management system I think it gets lost in the current popularity of quality improvement in the field of public health (where I work). Thanks also for the reminder to read the New Directions’ “Performance Management and Evaluation” publication. I’ve had it sitting on my desk for months and now have the motivation to get it read.

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