Despite the increase in federal tiered evidence initiatives that require the use of rigorous evaluation designs, such as randomized experiments, there has been limited guidance in the evaluation literature on practical strategies to implement such studies successfully. This paper provides lessons learned in executing experiments in applied…

Collaborative evaluation is an approach that offers, among others, many advantages in terms of access to information, quality of information gathered, opportunities for creative problem-solving, and receptivity to findings. In the last decade, collaborative evaluation has grown in popularity along with similar participatory, empowerment, and…

In many less developed democracies Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs) face the challenges of low demand for evaluation and the resulting low economic capacity of national evaluation communities. The VOPE model that evolved in well-developed democracies is not directly applicable under these circumstances, so a new model…

Schools, districts, and state-level educational organizations are experiencing a great shift in the way they do the business of education. This shift focuses on accountability, specifically through the expectation of the effective utilization of evaluative-focused efforts to guide and support decisions about educational program implementation. In…

The creative process is a multifaceted and dynamic path of thinking required to execute a project in design-based disciplines. The goal of this research was to test a model outlining the creative design process by investigating student experiences in a design project assignment. The study used an exploratory design to collect data from student…

Collaborative Evaluation systematically invites and engages stakeholders in program evaluation planning and implementation. Unlike "distanced" evaluation approaches, which reject stakeholder participation as evaluation team members, Collaborative Evaluation assumes that active, on-going engagement between evaluators and program staff,…

Evaluation capacity building (ECB) has become an area in the evaluation field that is attracting both scholarly attention and the practical work of evaluators. Despite some recent contributions, differing conceptions still exist concerning what constitutes ECB, let alone the nature of the capacity being built. Responding to an earlier call on the…

Continuing professional development (CPD) evaluation in education has been heavily influenced by "level models", deriving from the work of Kirkpatrick and Guskey in particular, which attempt to trace the processes through which CPD interventions achieve outcomes. This paper considers the strengths and limitations of such models, and in…

Whether looking at the spread and adoption of an intervention across a community, across multiple units, or within a single unit, an understanding of diffusion theory can help evaluators uncover patterns and impacts that might otherwise be overlooked. The theory alerts evaluators to examine why uptake of an intervention appeared different in…

Transfer is a term used in many fields to describe a change process involving movement of knowledge, skills, or policy from one place to another. The central components of transfer invite the evaluator to conceptualize the change process in terms of a starting point, different understandings of what is being transferred, the medium or mechanism,…

Translation theory originates in the field of applied linguistics and communication. The term knowledge translation has been adopted in health and other fields to refer to the exchange, synthesis, and application of knowledge. The logic model is a circular or iterative loop among various knowledge translation actors (knowledge producers and users)…

The current evaluation literature tends to conceptualize evaluator roles as a single, overarching orientation toward an evaluation, an orientation largely driven by evaluation methods, models, or stakeholder orientations. Roles identified range from a social transformer or a neutral social scientist to that of an educator or even a power merchant.…

Knowledge utilization is a field crossing many sectors, from agriculture, since the 1920s, to health care today. Evaluators have made long-standing contributions to understanding knowledge utilization. Different models or ways to think about knowledge utilization have evolved to reflect different perspectives, contexts, and stages of the process,…

This article is concerned with the underpinnings of practical participatory evaluation (PPE). Evaluation approaches have long been criticized because their results are often not used. It is believed that PPE addresses this drawback. The article focuses on the mechanisms underlying the links between activities and consequences in PPE. A PPE theory…

This dissertation addresses theory and practice of evaluation and assessment in university student affairs, by applying logic modeling/program theory to a case study. I intend to add knowledge to ongoing dialogue among evaluation scholars and practitioners on student affairs program planning and improvement as integral considerations that serve…