Contribution Guidelines

We’re very excited to learn from you!  If you work or study in the evaluation field, have Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources or Lessons Learned that you would be interested in sharing with your fellow evaluators, and would like to contribute to aea365, please consider submitting a draft contribution. Posts should:

  • Be written in first-person prose.
  • Include a simple greeting, and 1-3 sentence introduction of yourself at the very beginning, along with the general theme of your blog article (but, you don’t have a lot of space and this isn’t all about you – keep it short and focused)
  • Be short – from 300-600 words.
  • Focus on topics of interest to a wide range of evaluators.
  • Include an author photo (optional).
  • NOT use APA or other citation style meant for hardcopy documents; rather, embed links to online resources directly within the narrative and for resources that are offline, and use prose to describe such as “I found Smith and Jones’ recent article on Making Amazing Stuff More Amazing in the Fall 2010 issue of the Journal of Great Thoughts to be useful in laying out a step-by-step plan.”
  • Include a title.
  • (optional) Include relevant images (chart, photo, data visualization, illustration) for which you have use permission, as appropriate. Check photo sites that feature photos in the public domain, or Creative Commons licensed.  Be sure to include any necessary attributions for images/graphics submitted.
  • If you use images, include language for their alt text. See here for guidelines.
  • For each Hot Tip, Cool Trick, Rad Resource, or Lesson Learned, include a header and then a description and how it’s useful. Include active links where appropriate.
  • Avoid self-promotion.
  • Please don’t use fancy fonts or formatting. All of that is changed when your article posts to the site.

To get a feel for the breadth and style of contributions, take a look at the archives via the archive link at the top of this page.

Send your draft post (on a document attached to an email please!) for consideration to aea365@eval.org. Please note that we reserve the right to refuse submissions and to edit submissions for length and alignment with the style of aea365 – you’ll always have the opportunity to review and approve any significant edits.

17 thoughts on “Contribution Guidelines”

  1. Pingback: EPE TIG Week: What’s Valuable about the Environment? by Bethany Laursen – AEA365

  2. Dear Susan,

    How do I go about obtaining permission to use the conceptual framework as posted by and on the following excellent article. I would also like to adapt it to some of our units in our organisation.

    NPF TIG Week: When Logic Models Alone Just Won’t Do—Use a Conceptual Framework! by Kristina Jamal and Jacqueline Singh

    No comments · Posted by Sheila Robinson in Nonprofits and Foundations Evaluation

  3. https://shar.es/1ItBW8

    Dear Ms. Robinson,

         Hello, my name is Jennifer Stooke-Crosson and I am presently enrolled in the GDPI (Graduate Degree Professional Inquiry) through Queens University. Firstly, I’d like to thank you for posting Dawn X. Henderson on Modeling evaluation at the undergraduate level as it discussed many issues new evaluators are facing.
    . Practicing Logic Models and how she arranged for the students to meet to with an Executive Director to obtain information about the nonprofit focusing on their pogromming and key activities. I believe this was most helpful for the students to narrow their thoughts and have a clear understanding of and be able to accurately develop visual connections between the inputs, activities, outputs, short-term Intermediate, long term outcomes and the overall impact of the program. 
    . Recognizing the individual strengths and knowledge of your students/team: I thought her idea of pairing students one who is experienced in the methodology and a weaker student to perform the quantitative and qualitative analysis is brilliant! The more experienced student would gain the ability not only to improve their own skills but also learn a very important skill how to impart their knowledge to another in way that they will learn from it. 
    . Divide the report in sections and assign main duties and responsibilities: I like how Ms. Henderson broke down the task/report into smaller manageable chunks for new learners to digest and really get a handle on process. Even though they had only partial portions of the entire report to focus on they did have to review and summarize an article related to the nonprofit’s programs and services which would have showed their knowledge of the overall evaluation. I like that all the summaries were integrated into the discussion and or recommendation section of the report presented to the organization. It seems a fitting way to take the best from all and presenting a well-rounded and sound evaluation to the nonprofit organization. 

    The lessons she imparts to us are that maintaining lines of communication with the non-profit during the development of the evaluation is imperative in gaining feedback and recommendations to improve overall content and provide for a more insightful evaluation. As well, she feels developing timelines for important benchmarks is a must or the task can become a very stressful process for everyone involved. She says had they accounted for these there would have been more time for discussions, feedback and editing. I am presently working on time management skills and regulating myself and find even though I am very good at these skills I am always feeling like I am on catch up mode therefore I concur more time for discussions and less assignments during course might be more beneficial.

    Thank you for posting Ms. Dawn X. Henderson’s excerpt and I would love any feedback that you have learned about how to present data…both qualitative and quantitative and any hot tips you might have on sites.
    Ps. Thought I might add some RAD resources on this topic that I have found helpful and perhaps others might to…
    . http://www.wmich.educ/evalctr/checklists
    .Sage Researchmethods: Development-Oriented Evaluation Tailored for the Initial Implementation in Practical Program Evaluation. Sage Publications, Inc. (2005).
    .Logic Models:
    http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/extensin/LogicModel.pdf
    .http://www.cdc.gov/eval/evalguide.pdf

  4. Mitchell Browne, Sr

    This is actually not a comment but a request to be a part of this forum. I am a new employee and also new to the field of Monitoring and Evaluation. I believe with this forum and its articles and comments from renounce practitioner, I will start to learn and grow.

    1. Please do become a subscriber! You should see options for doing so right on your screen. Thanks for your interest in aea365!

  5. Pingback: LAWG Week: Ann Emery on Conference Tips for Novice Evaluators · AEA365

  6. Pingback: The Conference is Over, Now What? Professional Development for Novice Evaluators - Emery Evaluation

  7. Hi. My name is Fran Hoffman. I’m a Counseling Psychology graduate student at Texas A&M University – Central Texas and am have just begun program evaluation as both a class and as my grad assistant job. I need to learn quickly, so reading the tips from those who have gone before me is very valuable.

    I just read the post talking about the importance of stakeholder engagement by Alice Walters. She mentioned three tips that build on those discussed by our fearless leader recently. She stressed the need to include stakeholders in every step of the evaluation process. That makes sense. They are our customers, and if they aren’t happy, they won’t return to us for further evaluations. She also mentioned the importance of frequent and ongoing communication with stakeholders. We have each been assigned to a project and will have the primary responsibility for communicating with them regularly. Regular communication goes a long way in terms of minimizing misunderstandings and staying on the same page. Her final tip was to consider the stakeholder’s views at every stage of the evaluation process – that views aren’t static. I’m glad I read that. I was, in fact, thinking of the stakeholder’s views as carved in stone, but I now see that this evaluation and the process involved will be more like a living organism that requires constant back and forth.

    These were very useful insights to start with and I look forward to learning a great deal more from the evaluation community. Thank you for sharing your experiences with the novices!

  8. Pingback: Sheila B. Robinson on Joining the aea365 Author Community · AEA365

  9. Pingback: LAWG Week: David J. Bernstein and Valerie Caracelli on the Local Arrangements Activities for Evaluation 2013 · AEA365

  10. Pingback: LAWG Week: Brian Yoder on Evaluators Visit Capitol Hill · AEA365

  11. Pingback: LAWG Week: Bernadette Wright and Ladel Lewis on “Delivering the Goods” · AEA365

  12. Pingback: Bloggers Series: Susan Kistler on Writing Weekly for aea365 - AEA365

  13. Thanks Susan. Since it is the American Eval Assoc, and most members are from the USA and would know the term, and contributors are briefed on what goes in which sections, I don’t see any need to change it. Not too informal or radical to me!

    Though it is an odd use of the English language to define ‘radical’ as not meaning radical but something else entirely! Here in Australia something similar has happened with ‘awesome’, with the term being used colloquially to mean something like ‘excellent’.
    Cheers – David

  14. Hi, I’m finding these very interesting and appreciate the overnight Twitter alerts. One thing, though: what, pray, is meant by the term ‘Rad resource’? I know what a resource is but what is ‘rad’?
    Thanks – David

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.