Deshawn Smith on Untangling the Alphabet Soup of Evaluation Acronyms

My name is Deshawn Smith and I am a student and novice evaluator. I’ve been keeping a crib sheet for the past year with acronyms that I came across that were used by evaluators.

Lessons Learned: There is a lot of insider language related to evaluation and used by AEA. Here is a starter list to get through all the acronyms.

• AEA: The American Evaluation Association – Sponsor of this blog and national professional association for evaluators.
• AJE: The American Journal of Evaluation – One of AEA’s two sponsored journals that members receive for free (the other is NDE). This one is a traditional peer-reviewed journal covering a range of evaluation topics.
• AERA: The American Educational Research Association – National professional home for educational researchers. AERA has two divisions which appear to be home to many evaluators: Division D: Measurement & Research Methodology, and Division H: Research, Evaluation, & Assessment in Schools.
• APA: The American Psychological Association – National professional home for psychologists.
• BDI: Building Diversity Initiative – An AEA initiative aimed at improving the quality and effectiveness of evaluation by increasing the number of racially and ethnically diverse evaluators, and improving the capacity of all evaluators to work across cultures.
• CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – United States Government component dedicated to improving health outcomes and prevention of disease, injury and disability. Co-sponsor of the AEA/CDC Summer Evaluation Institute.
• GEDI: Graduate Education Diversity Internship (pronounced jed-eye, like the Star Wars warriors) – Nine-month long AEA sponsored internship for Graduate Students from diverse backgrounds. The program grew out of the BDI.
• M&E: Monitoring and Evaluation (pronounced like M&M) – Used widely in international aid and increasingly more broadly as well.
• NDE: New Directions for Evaluation – One of AEA’s two sponsored journals that members receive for free (the other is AJE). This one focuses on a new theme each quarterly issue.
• RCT: Randomized Controlled Trial – Method in which subjects are randomly assigned to two or more groups before receiving an intervention with some groups receiving the intervention and some not.
• TIG: Topical Interest Group (pronounced as if it rhymes with ‘pig’) – Subgroups of AEA based on member interests. You must be a member of AEA to join any of the TIGs.

Do you have more acronyms to add? Please include them in the comments. I’d like to round out my list.

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.