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, …

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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 …

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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 …

QUAL Eval Week: Laurie Stevahn and Jean King on Essential Competencies for Effective Qualitative Evaluators Read More »

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, …

QUAL Eval Week: Leslie Goodyear, Jennifer Jewiss, Janet Usinger and Eric Barela on Qualitative Inquiry in Evaluation Read More »