I’m Aimee White, new Board Member At Large. Thank you all who elected me, I will strive to represent you well. I live in Washington State but have roots from the southeastern part of the US. I own and serve as Principal Evaluator for Custom Evaluation Services, an independent evaluation consulting firm specializing in Collaborative, …
Aimee White on Meeting People Where They Are Read More »
Hi, we’re Anne Cullen Puente and April Bender, evaluators at the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, Michigan. We were really excited by Michael Quinn Patton’s June 2014 article in the American Journal of Evaluation where he encouraged evaluators to develop our self-reflexivity and deeply consider our own thinking patterns. We couldn’t agree more, and believe that mindful evaluation could be helpful for doing just that. Mindfulness can be thought of as a theoretical construct, …
Hello, my name is Jayne Corso and I am the community manager for American Evaluation Association. From my past posts, you can see that I love social media. I see these platforms as never-ending conferences, where you can meet and share ideas with people with similar interests. Although I have a tendency to favor social …
Jayne Corso on Why Blogging is so Important Read More »
Hello, I’m Norma Martinez-Rubin, a public health practitioner, program evaluator, and occasional trainer. Work projects that integrate opportunities to learn about the people for whom they are designed excite me. Hence, I find qualitative inquiry quite fitting. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews have been primary data-collection methods on evaluation studies I’ve led, guided, or to …
Greetings! I’m Katrina Bledsoe and I’m a research director at the Missouri-based DeBruce Foundation. The Foundation is currently working on starting a research institute that addresses issues related to education, community, and economic development. In my years of working with and in communities, I’ve found that qualitative inquiry is a foundational tool in being able …
QUAL Eval Week: Katrina Bledsoe on Qualitative Inquiry and Theory-driven Evaluation Read More »
Hi. I am George Grob, an evaluation consultant focusing on policy development and advocacy. During 40 years of Federal service, mostly in the Department of Health and Health and Human Services), I learned that policy makers (Members of Congress and high level executives) are very interested in evaluations. They especially like observations, real life stories, …
QUAL Eval Week: George Grob on Qualitative Evaluation for Policy Makers Read More »
My name is Michael Quinn Patton and I am an independent evaluation consultant. That means I make my living meeting my clients’ information needs. That’s how I came to engage in Utilization-Focused Evaluation. Utilization-focused evaluation does not depend on or advocate any particular evaluation content, model, method, theory, or even use. Rather, it is a …
Hello everyone—Laurie Stevahn (Seattle University) and Jean King (University of Minnesota) here—continuing to grapple with issues relevant to program evaluator competencies (whether essential sets exist) and usefulness (if enhanced practice results). In fact, for over a decade we have been working on a formal set of evaluator competencies, trying to answer the daunting question of …
Happy New Year! We’re Leslie Goodyear, Jennifer Jewiss, Janet Usinger, and Eric Barela, the co-leaders of the AEA Qualitative Methods TIG. All four of us are practicing evaluators with a passion for bringing the stories and experiences of evaluation stakeholders to the fore. For the past few years, as part of editing a book together, …
Hi all! Liz Zadnik here, aea365 Outreach Coordinator and occasional Saturday Contributor. I wanted to share some insights and reflection I had as the result from a recent EVALTALK discussion thread. Last month, someone posed the following request: I’m searching for a “Why Evaluate” article for parents/community members/stakeholders. An article that explains in clear and plain …
Liz Zadnik on Engaging community members in the “Why evaluate?” conversation Read More »
