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YFE TIG Week: Youth Engagement during a Pandemic by Marcia M. Zorrilla

Hello! I’m Marcia M. Zorrilla, DrPH, MCHES and the Director of Positive Youth Development at the Stanford REACH Lab, Stanford School of Medicine. My years of experience in youth board development come from my work as a clinical health educator at a school-based health center where I established a Youth Advisory Board from the ground …

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RTD TIG Week: Finding a Needle in a Stack of Needles by Gavin Reddick

Greetings, AEA365. Liz DiLuzio here, lead curator of the blog. Although today’s post is from the AEA365 archives, it is as relevant now as it was when it was originally posted in 2020. Whether this is your first read or your tenth, I hope you find something new and thought-provoking in this post. Hi, my name …

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RTD TIG Week: AEA Involvement is More Important than Ever by Josh Schnell

My name is Josh Schnell and I am co-chair of the Research Technology & Development (RTD) Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG) within AEA.  I have been working in RTD evaluation and research assessment for over 12 years, now as director of the Academic & Government Consulting team within the Science Group at Clarivate.

RTD TIG Week: Observations from Four Days at a Conference by Anand Desai

The purpose of this blog is to offer my first impressions of the hot topics discussed in the sessions I attended at the 2022 conference in New Orleans. By way of background, I am Anand Desai, Senior Fellow at Clarivate and Professor of Public Policy Emeritus at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, Ohio …

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RTD TIG Week: Representation of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research in PubMed’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) by Abbey Zuehlke

My name is Abbey Zuehlke, Ph.D., P.M.P. (she/her) and I am the Director of Operations at Lexical Intelligence, LLC. Over the past year I have served as the Project Manager for a team that is increasing the representation of behavioral and social sciences research terms in PubMed’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) vocabulary. I am delighted …

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RTD TIG Week: Augmenting Expert Opinion with Data-driven Approaches by Ian Hutchins

I’m Ian Hutchins, and I am an Assistant Professor of Data and Information Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Information School. I use quantitative analysis of information networks to find ways to improve the research enterprise and accelerate biomedical research advances. Research evaluations, like those conducted for science funding agencies in policymaking, are entering …

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RTD TIG Week: Evaluating Interdisciplinarity by Bethany Laursen, Nicole Motzer, and Kelly Anderson

Hi, everyone. This is Bethany Laursen, independent consultant with Laursen Evaluation & Design, LLC, and Assistant Dean in the Graduate School at Michigan State University; Nicole Motzer, Director of Research Development at Montana State University; and Kelly Anderson, Research Scientist at the National Institute of Standards & Technology. Interdisciplinarity (ID) is all the rage in …

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RTD TIG Week: Promoting Rigor and Reproducibility in Your Day-to-Day Work by Paula Fearon, Heather Eshleman, Ami Shah, and Leigh Firestone Brooks

I’m Paula Fearon, Co-Founder of the Analytics Research Institute, and together with my colleagues Heather Eshleman, Ami Shah, and Leigh Firestone Brooks, we are pleased to kick-off the RTD TIG week on AEA 365. Our day-to-day work involves producing a myriad of analyses using all types of datasets. To ensure our work is both high …

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Government Eval TIG Week: Layering Data Placemat Sessions by Elise Garvey

Hello, I’m Elise Garvey, a senior management auditor from the King County Auditor’s Office in Seattle, Washington. I have become a huge fan of using data placemat sessions for my projects ever since learning about them at Eval 2015 and learning more from Kylie Hutchinson’s tips and tricks. Data placemats are large sheets of paper with themed snippets of raw or basic data analysis, and a data placemat session is when you review and discuss those placemats with stakeholders. This has been a really valuable tool for ensuring I’m understanding the data I’m using and getting the perspective of people closest to the data.

Government Eval TIG Week: Evaluation Advisory Groups are the way to go, but planning is key by Chris Voegeli

Hi, I am Chris Voegeli, and I’m an evaluation fellow in the Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology, and Laboratory Services at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the last year, my Canadian Evaluation Society colleagues Gene Krupa, Barbara Szijarto, Margo Schmitt-Boshnick, and I reviewed the literature and used our personal experience to think critically about Evaluation Advisory Groups (EAGs). Before joining the CDC Evaluation Fellowship Program, I led the National Evaluation Center for the National Network of STD Clinical Prevention Training Centers. While at the National Evaluation Center, we used several types of EAGs in our work regularly. I learned that the purpose of an EAG guides the planning and implementation of the advisory group. It’s important to identify the right people to achieve that purpose. If you are looking to enhance or support the methodological or technical quality of the evaluation, recruit seasoned evaluators familiar with the evaluation of programs similar to yours. If you are interested in generating regular and rich input in decisions throughout the evaluation, create an EAG of representatives of key stakeholder groups. When you have multiple funders with competing interests or informational needs, it can help to have an EAG that brings funders together to talk about the evaluation or address evaluation-related issues as they arise. Perhaps you need an EAG that meets another purpose or combination of purposes.