Hi, I am Taku Chirau, and I am the Deputy Director of the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA), a Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI) Implementing Partner.
I am Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Evaluation Advisor for the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI). For many years I have worked to build and strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems at the national level, first in Mexico and later in various other countries. I work with the GEI to support its mission of helping countries strengthen their M&E systems so that governments can gather and use evidence to improve the lives of their citizens.
Hi, we are Lycia Lima (Deputy Director), Gabriela Lacerda (Executive Manager), and Lorena Figueiredo (Researcher) of the Center for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Lusophone Africa and Brazil (CLEAR-LAB), which is based at the School of Economics of Getulio Vargas Foundation and is an Implementing Partner of the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI).
Hi! My name is Patrizia Cocca and I lead the Communications and Knowledge Management team of the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI). This year, together with Shaha Zehra and Claudia Olavarria, I coordinated gLOCAL Evaluation Week 2023, which saw an estimated 20,000 participants joining 300+ events hosted in 53 countries.
Hi, I am Heather Bryant, a member of the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI) Global Team. The GEI supports developing countries in strengthening their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems to help governments gather and use evidence that improves the lives of their citizens. The GEI believes that to effectively support countries in this process and to be able to provide tailored, context-specific advisory services, it is first necessary to understand the existing systems that affect M&E in the country. To assist in this effort, the GEI Global Team, in collaboration with the global network of Centers for Learning on Evaluation and Results (CLEAR), developed the Monitoring and Evaluation Systems Analysis (MESA) diagnostic tool. The MESA is a tool that guides stakeholders (e.g., government entities, evaluation professionals, civil society) in gathering, structuring, and analyzing information on the current capacity of their country’s M&E ecosystem. Since the tool’s launch in early 2022, the GEI Global Team and colleagues in the CLEAR network have been using it to help identify what is working well, what needs to be improved, and to inform capacity-development strategies meant to strengthen the systems that enable M&E to flourish. We have learned a few things along the way – both in the development and in the use of the tool.
Hi, I’m Quisha Brown, co-founder of Humanistic Care, LLC, an organization offering culturally responsive solutions to tough evaluation challenges. A recent AEA365 blog post titled “Applying Rubrics in Evaluation” by Gerard Atkinson caught my attention with its discussion on the benefits of using rubrics in evaluation. The Progressive Outcomes Scale Logic Model (POSLM) framework I developed in 2020 is one such evaluation model which uses a stage model rubric approach to measure outcomes towards social impact progressively using a common set of indicators. During my 20+ years working with nonprofits serving marginalized communities and 3 years helping them to create POSLMs, I’ve compiled over 200+ common person-centered equity indicators which derived from direct feedback shared with me by people most impacted by inequitable practices.
My name is Liane Ventura and I serve as a faculty Research Associate with the Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) in Women’s Health at East Tennessee State University (ETSU). I am an applied Public Health researcher who is interested in mixed methodology and community-engaged approaches.
Howdy AEA 365, it’s Will Fisher and Jenny Seelig, Research Scientists with NORC at the University of Chicago. NORC is devoted to objective and dynamic social science research.
As originally planned, our study,Engaging Youth for Positive Change (EYPC): Promoting Community Health Through Civic Education, was a randomized controlled trial carefully designed to evaluate the impact the EYPC’s[i] civics curriculum has on student health and community well-being in rural Illinois. It was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2019 and scheduled to take place from 2020 to 2023. By Spring 2020, we had recruited 18 schools and 18 teachers into control and treatment groups and expected to steadfastly proceed. However, no one could have predicted the circuitous path our research would take.
Hi, I’m Burt Perrin, and I’d like you think about bureaucracy – its strengths, weaknesses, and what this means for evaluation.
Bureaucracy is complex. It is essential to democracy – while at the same time presenting many challenges. Evaluation has the potential to aid bureaucracies in being more responsive and effective – but also with the potential to acerbate the situation.
I’m David Keyes and I run R for the Rest of Us. Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of people learn R through courses and trainings. For a long time, I felt like I wasn’t a “real” R user. Real R users, in my mind, used R for hardcore stats. I “only” used R for descriptive stats. I sometimes felt like I was using a souped up sports car to drive 20 miles an hour to the grocery store. Eventually, I realized that this framing misses the point. R started out as a tool created by statisticians for other statisticians. But, over a quarter century since its creation, R is as much a tool to improve your workflow as it is a tool for statistics.
