I am Zach Tilton, an evaluator and a doctoral student at Western Michigan University in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation program. Pursuing a PhD in evaluation while working as an evaluator allows me to integrate class insights to enhance my work and work experiences to ground my studies. This interplay between theory and practice was …
My name is Fernando Ospina and I am a PhD student in sociology at Western Michigan University. I had the opportunity to take a qualitative methods in evaluation course in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation program. As a part of our coursework we wrote blog posts analyzing Lincoln and Guba’s constructivist conjectures. The conjecture that …
Greetings! My name is Amy Jersild, Doctoral Scholar at Western Michigan University (WMU), an evaluator working in the international development sector, and currently a student in Dr. Michael Harnar’s Qualitative Research Methods in Evaluation course at WMU. We have been reading The Constructivist Credo by Yvonna S. Lincoln and Egon G. Guba (2013) in class, …
Reflections on Constructivism Week: Sensemaking as theory development by Amy Jersild Read More »
Hello! My name is Taneisha Lee, CEO of Transformative Research and Evaluation, an independent research and evaluation consulting firm in Atlanta, Georgia. We are currently evaluating a Minority Youth Violence Prevention II (MYVP2) grant-funded program for one of our clients, Clayton County System of Care. Two of the grant’s goals are to reduce youth crime …
Increasing Youth Engagement in Focus Groups by Taneisha Lee Read More »
Hello! I am Beverly Peters, an assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. This is the final article in a 6 part series on Using Focus Groups for Monitoring and Evaluation. The articles in this series have discussed when to use focus groups, planning for the focus group including who to invite, developing questions …
Managing and Analyzing Focus Group Data by Beverly Peters Read More »
Greetings! I am Beverly Peters, assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. This is the fifth article in a 6-part series on Using Focus Groups for Monitoring and Evaluation. The fourth article discussed developing focus group questions and a questioning route, and this article will discuss moderating the focus group. You have planned your …
Moderating a Focus Group by Beverly Peters Read More »
Hello again! I am Beverly Peters, assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. This is the fourth article in a 6-part series on Using Focus Groups for Monitoring and Evaluation. The third article discussed populating a focus group—a very important yet challenging aspect of focus groups. This article will discuss an equally challenging and …
Designing your Focus Group Questions and Questioning Route by Beverly Peters Read More »
Greetings! I am Beverly Peters, assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. This is the third article in a 6-part series on Using Focus Groups for Monitoring and Evaluation. The second article discussed planning the focus group. This article will go more in depth into a very important part of focus group planning: populating …
Populating a Focus Group by Beverly Peters Read More »
Hello again! I am Beverly Peters, assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. This is the second article in a 6-part series on Using Focus Groups for Monitoring and Evaluation. In the first article, we learned that focus groups are an appropriate data collection tool when the topic or evaluation question would benefit from …
Focus Group Planning by Beverly Peters Read More »
Greetings! I am Beverly Peters, assistant professor of Measurement and Evaluation at American University. I have over 25 years of experience teaching, researching, and designing, implementing, and evaluating community development and governance projects, mainly in southern Africa. I have spent the bulk of my career using qualitative methods to evaluate projects; and write a blog for …
Focus Groups: The Right Tool for Me? By Beverly Peters Read More »
