Hello! We are Isaac D. Castillo and Colleen Coyne, and we represent the Learning and Evaluation team at KABOOM!. And we have a question for you: What do playgrounds, data, systemic racism, maps, and evaluation all have in common? Playgrounds should serve as a sanctuary for children – an escape from everyday pressures where they can just be kids. But not every child in the United States has access to a safe and high-quality playground. At KABOOM!, we refer to these disparities in access and quality as playspace inequity. KABOOM! builds playgrounds in partnership with others across the United States to end playspace inequity, so more kids can grow up happy and healthy. But how do we measure playspace inequity? That is where data, maps, storytelling, and evaluation come in.

We are the Student Evaluation Case Competition Working Group (Dana Linnell, Steve Mumford, Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, Julian Nyamupachitu, Rana Gautam, Jennifer Yessis, Christine Roseveare, and Asma Ali). We’re excited to tell you about the inaugural competition!

Janelle, JoAnna, Mary, and Christiana here, evaluators from Emory Centers for Public Health Training and Technical Assistance. We had the opportunity to present a session entitled No More Crappy Surveys at last year’s AEA Summer Evaluation Institute. We are on a mission to rid the world of crappy surveys, and are here to share some of our Hot Tips and Rad Resources to do so.

If you haven’t already, check out the first blog post in this series, No More Crappy Surveys – Best Practices in Survey Design for Evaluations (you can check it out here). Today, we’ll be following up with some tips on how to analyze your surveys (which, of course, you’ve made sure are not crappy!). Stay tuned for our final post of this series, on how to report your findings to different audiences.

Hello AEA friends –

This is Corrie Whitmore, the 2023 President of AEA. I’m thrilled to be in Indianapolis for EVAL2023: The Power of Story and hope to see many of you here, attending workshops and conference sessions and enjoying the great local attractions.

Our conference week kicks off on October 9, which is also “Indigenous People’s Day.” Indigenous People’s Day is special to me, because I’m the mother of Indigenous children, and also because it offers such a clear example of The Power of Story. Let me explain.

We are Linda Khumalo and Gert Van Hecken. We collaborate on a project to reimagine M&E from a decolonial perspective. Here we share some lessons learned. Linda is an evaluation practitioner and scholar contributing to the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) discourse who sees the challenges of applying a transformative evaluative lens. Gert is an …

Decolonization in Evaluation Week: Knowledge asymmetries and struggles for space: Towards a decolonial turn in the evaluation of ‘development’ and ‘conservation’ programmes by Linda Khumalo & Gert Van Hecken Read More »

Hi there! I’m Katie Boone, PhD student in Organizational Leadership Policy Development – Evaluation Studies at the University of Minnesota. From our Guiding Principles, Evaluator Competencies, and Statement on Cultural Competence, context has a crucial role in evaluation practice. One of the greatest blindspots I see in the field of evaluation, is our consciousness to …

Decolonization in Evaluation Week: Finding Place: Grounding Evaluation by Decolonizing Context by Katie Boone Read More »

Hello! I’m Susan Wolfe, CEO and Community Consultant at Susan Wolfe and Associates based in Grand Prairie, TX (near Dallas/Fort Worth). A large share of my work is focused on evaluating initiatives designed to address health and educational disparities. Have you ever taken a close look at the programs and initiatives that you evaluate and …

Decolonization in Evaluation Week: Decolonizing Evaluation Requires Decolonizing What We are Evaluating by Susan M. Wolfe Read More »

Greetings! I am Christopher Hall, MSW, PhD, Assistant Professor of Human Services Administration and Delivery at the University of North Georgia. In 1999, I was introduced to intersectionality and critical theory when I attended my first statewide conference and a workshop on the topic. Since then, I have developed my work around various methods of …

Decolonization in Evaluation Week: Becoming an Evaluation Accomplice by Using Critical Indigenous Theories By Christopher Hall Read More »

We measure what we value. This is not news. But do we recognize what Americans commonly value?

My name is Andrea Nelson Trice, PhD, and I’m the president of Catalyst Research LLC.  I spent part of my childhood living in the Peruvian rainforest and that experience still shapes my work. I have conducted research on cross-cultural power dynamics for more than two decades. My most recent publication, Strong Together: Building Partnerships across Cultures in an Age of Distrust, draws from 90 interviews with American and Majority World leaders. Together we explore the human complexities of international development work.