John LaVelle on Other Evaluation-Related Organizations

My name is John LaVelle, I am the Director of Operations and External Affairs for the School of Behavioral & Organizational Sciences and the School of Politics & Economics at Claremont Graduate University.  I’m also a PhD candidate specializing in Evaluation and Applied Research Methods, and a past curator of the AEA365 blog.  Today I’m going to share three Rad Resources about some organizations whose work overlaps with Evaluation and also maintain active Listservs as a way of sharing ideas and resources.

Rad Resource: The Society for Community Research and Action.  Several posts have been written about the Society for Community Research and Action, which is also known as Division 27 of the American Psychological Association. They are dedicated to advancing theory, research, and social action, and much of their work overlaps with evaluation.  SCRA maintains a very active listserv (similar to EvalTalk), and regularly share information about conferences and professional development, research and work opportunities, as well as professional challenges and questions.

Rad Resource: ARNOVA is the Association for Research on Non-Profit Organizations and Voluntary Action. Many evaluators work in a not-for-profit context or with organizations trying to increase volunteer and philanthropy activities, and ARNOVA is a good resource.  Similar to AEA’s TIG structure, ARNOVA has areas of specialization, such as community grassroots, social entrepreneurship, and even a section for individuals working at the intersection of practice<—->academics (they call this intersection “pracademics”).  ARNOVA’s listserv and webpages have much information about resources, conferences and meetings, calls for papers, etc.

Rad Resource: CBPR stands for Community Based Participatory Research (see Laura Myerchin Skarloff’s excellent post) and the University of Washington hosts a very useful listserv for sharing ideas and problem-solving.  They even offer a parallel listserv just for sharing work and research opportunities.  Membership information is available here.

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.

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