ERIC Number: EJ1479535
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Sep
Pages: 21
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1098-2140
EISSN: EISSN-1557-0878
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Evaluation Capacity Building through Community-University Partnership
Sarah Suiter1; Kathryn Y. Morgan2; Sara Eccleston3
American Journal of Evaluation, v46 n3 p317-337 2025
Evaluation is essential to achieving program outcomes, especially when stakeholders engage with evaluation and make use of the findings. Both of these activities require evaluation capacity that might not be present in community-based organizations. In this paper, we describe how community-university partnership models can support evaluation capacity building (ECB). The basic framework for our ECB initiative was a semester-long, master's-level university course in which 5-6 community partners worked with small groups of 3-4 students to design an evaluation plan. We used mixed-methods to assess (1) if organizations implemented the evaluation plans developed in the course; (2) how organizations used the findings; and (3) what evaluation skills participants continued to use after the course ended. We found that organizations that implemented their evaluation plans gained intended outcomes of ECB, such as improving practice and communicating with stakeholders. These results suggest that community-university partnerships for developing ECB can be effective.
Descriptors: Evaluation, Capacity Building, School Community Relationship, Community Organizations, Graduate Students, Evaluation Methods, Design
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research; Tests/Questionnaires
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: UL1TR000445
Author Affiliations: 1Department of Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA; 2Department of Psychology, The University of the South—Sewanee, TN, USA; 3Social, Behavioral and Human Sciences, Division of School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington—Tacoma, WA, USA