I’m Wendy Tackett, the president of iEval, a part-time faculty member at Western Michigan University, and a new blogger in 2014. Rad Resource - Carpe Diem: Make Your Evaluations Useful! Three of my iEval colleagues and I started this weekly blog last June primarily to help evaluators make their evaluations more useful. Hot Tips - Favorite posts: Here are some of our most referenced posts to date, listed chronologically: Week 5: Using a ‘Top of the Mind Memo’ - Sometimes even interim reports can be too cumbersome, so timely, relevant feedback presented in a short format can be very useful as a check point for clients. Week 16: Avoiding misuse: The evaluation client’s perspective - While most of our readers seem to be evaluators, it’s helpful to step back and think from the client perspective at times. Week 18: Miss America: The nation’s largest scholarship program for women - Evaluation really is all around us, and this comical perspective on creating a logic model reminds us of this, while also reminding us to humanize the work we are doing. Week 20: I was at the European Evaluation Society Biennial Conference - It’s always enlightening to listen to Michael Scriven and try to apply his ideas to your own work. Lessons Learned - Why I blog: My focus has always been the meaningful use of evaluation findings. I don’t do evaluation for the sake of research, to merely fulfill funder requirements, or to have my work never to be used. I want clients to benefit from the work and use it to make improvements and decisions. The Carpe Diem blog is one way to help others achieve that. I also provide evaluation training by teaching graduate students in evaluation, presenting at conferences, and serving on the Michigan Association for Evaluation board…all with the purpose of helping others practically apply their high quality evaluation findings. Lessons Learned - What I’ve learned: First, it’s been great using the team approach - we share ideas with each other and build off of each other’s work. It takes the weekly burden off of one person and lets the readers benefit from multiple perspectives. Second, the online interaction with readers hasn’t been what we expected. Most of our feedback is direct - emails, conferences, personal contact. While we may not get regular, immediate feedback on each post, we’ve gotten enough to think we’re resonating with some people and encourage us to continue! Hot Tip - I think a good post is a mix of information, usefulness, and fun. We try to share useful information, provide tips that can immediately be used, and end with a silly picture of the blogger that week - just to remind people to have fun with evaluation! This winter, we’re continuing our occasional series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Wendy Tackett and Joseph Trommater on Local Evaluation Capacity Building Kathleen Dowell on the Evaluation Client Feedback Form Sheila B Robinson on A Call for Blog Posts!

I’m Carrie Tanasichuk, a relatively new evaluation blogger. I currently work in the Program Research & Development department at the YMCA of Greater Toronto, where we support the Association to assess impact and improve programming across the YMCA as well as in the larger community. Rad Resource - CarrieTanasichuk.com: Broadly speaking, my blog is about anything to do with research and evaluation. I’m a social psychologist by training and my favourite thing to write about is how social psychological theory can be useful to evaluation. I also find data visualization fascinating and I like to posts tips and tricks that I learn. I’m currently branching out and learning R, and I would like to start posting about that in the future. Hot Tips: Favorite posts: Measuring attitudes that predict behaviours - Using attitudinal survey questions to predict future behaviour is something that comes up repeatedly when discussing the external validity of evaluation findings. In this post I look at the theory behind attitudes predicting behaviour. Developing valid self-report measures - Self-report measures are widely used in evaluation, but lately I’ve come across several people (not evaluators) who are quick to dismiss them. I wanted to do some background research on how to make self-report measures as valid as possible. A simple GIF illustrating dataviz principles - I didn’t create this GIF, but I love how it communicates a lot of principles very simply. I’ve shared it with a lot of people and they’ve all loved it, too. Lessons Learned: Why I blog: I’ve kept a personal blog in one form or another for over 12 years. I’ve blogged about everything from cooking, running, knitting, and backpacking! I first came across evaluation blogs 3 years ago when I started reading AEA365. I toyed with the idea of starting an evaluation blog but I was hesitant - would I have anything valuable to add to the conversation? Would anyone even read my posts? I finally decided to take the plunge and I’ve been overwhelmed at how friendly and welcoming other evaluation bloggers have been! Lessons Learned: What I’ve learned: I sometimes hesitate to publish a post if I don’t feel like I’m an "expert" on the topic. I read a tip from Susan Kistler that you can blog as a fellow learner, rather than as an expert. I think this is wonderful advice and something that I have tried to take to heart. Another lesson learned is to constantly draft posts. Whenever I have an idea for a post I quickly create a draft and jot down some notes. Sometimes I go back and flesh it out to be a full post (and sometimes the draft will sit there forever collecting dust). This winter, we’re continuing our occasional series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: PD Presenters Week: Kaia Ambrose and Simon Hearn on A Whistle-Stop Tour of Outcome Mapping PD Presenters Week: Mindy Hightower King and Courtney Brown on A Framework for Developing High Quality Performance Measurement Systems of Evaluation Jonny Morell on Logic Models and Unintended Consequences

Call me Daniel. "Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world". (Herman Melville, 1851) Rad Resource - Comprehensive Evaluation. A site where to find various information and resources on evaluation, public policy and evaluating public policies. Despite the limited time that I have, I started posting in October 2014 with the intention to include a post once a week, at least. Hot Tips — Favorite posts: Comprehensive Evaluation is bilingual, it is written in Spanish and English. I have only a few posts, but here are those I think are most interesting. Also, I will include links to certain sections of the blog that I believe may be of interest to you. Evidence, Evaluation, and Effective Government (by Caroline Heider). Interesting opinion piece by Caroline Heider, Director General of the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank Group, originally published in The Diplomatic Courier. ENGAGE: Open Government Data. ENGAGE is a door for researchers that leads them to the world of Open Government Data. By using the ENGAGE platform, researchers and citizens will be able to submit, acquire, search and visualize diverse, distributed and derived Public sector datasets from all the countries of the European Union. Authors. Links to relevant information on authors and researchers. Training. Links to undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in design, management, analysis and evaluation of public policies around the world. Lessons Learned — Why I blog: Comprehensive Evaluation is the result of my investigation for the preparation of my degree in Public Administration and Management Final Project, "The evaluation of public policies in Valencian Region: situation analysis and proposal of institutionalization": many materials collected, pages visited or consulted sources. These data and information will be gradually incorporated into the web. I hope, someone might find it useful. Lessons Learned — What I’ve learned: In addition to managing Comprehensive Evaluation, I have another personal blog. I am studying a master and also working at the Polytechnic University of Valencia so, I do not have much time for posting in my two blogs but I try never to forget … Post is an escape, a way to get away from daily routine and show the rest of the world who you are, what interests you, what worries you, what you can offer and someone may be interested in receiving… It is also a great way to make friends, if not … what would I do here? Thank you very much!! This winter, we’re continuing our occasional series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: WE Week: Nick Hart on the Value of Affiliate Connections with the Academic Community Ayesha Tillman on Finding an Entry to Mid-Level Evaluation Position within a Government Agency Susan Kistler on the Democratization of Data

Hello! My name is Chithra Adams. I work as an evaluator at the Human Development Institute, University of Kentucky. I blog about design thinking and evaluation. Rad Resource - Evaluation and Design Thinking: The blog explores the application of design thinking principles to the practice of evaluation. Each post includes a review of design thinking and design literature and ends with a discussion of possible applications to evaluation. I usually post once every two weeks. I view the blog as a community learning space and visitors are encouraged to provide their interpretation of the concepts discussed in the posts. Hot Tips: Favorite posts: The blog is fairly new so there only a few posts. Most of the current posts focus on understanding the definition of design thinking. Here are two posts that will give you a sense of the blog: The Start of a Preoccupation: This posts talks about how I got into design thinking. It also talks about the questions I had after reading through many definitions of design thinking. The post includes some great introductory resources on design thinking. Definition Deconstruction Design Sensibility Part 1 of 3: This post describes design sensibility and what it means to evaluators. The post includes an article by design consultants. It is a pretty easy read and gives a glimpse of how designers’ view problems. Lessons Learned: Why I blog: There are a lot of web resources on design thinking. I found these resources to be quite helpful to get me excited and interested in the concept. However, they were less helpful concerning how design thinking could be used in the practice of evaluation. At a cursory glance, design thinking will appear as a strategy to make products more user-centered. As a discipline, evaluation is rich with theories and practices that encourage being user centered (utilization focused evaluation, empowerment evaluation etc.). Evaluation has a strong tradition of implementing practices and developing products that are user centered. So what does design thinking offer evaluation? Does design thinking provide any added value to evaluation? What does it look like to practice design thinking in evaluation? The blog is the record of my journey to answer these questions. Lessons Learned: What I’ve learned: Blogging to me is like exercising! Once I get started, I have so much fun. This winter, we’re continuing our occasional series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Bloggers Series: John Nash on Contributing to Multiple Blogs Emily Lauer and Courtney Dutra on Person-Centered Evaluation: Aging and Disability Services Bloggers Week: Cameron Norman on Censemaking

Hi there! I am Deborah Levy, Principal of SuccessLinks, LLC and the new Chair of the Independent Consulting TIG. I have been evaluating for 15 years and have been independent for eight years. I have published two posts since I started my blog "Why Not Blog?" after attending the annual conference in October. As you can see, my start has been slow and the holidays didn’t help much. I started my blog because I wanted to insert my voice into the blogging world, specifically around evaluation and my work as an independent consultant. I really enjoy reading friends’ and colleagues’ blogs (evaluation-related and those that aren’t). They inspire me and also I really like that a blog helps you understand a different side to people. I wanted to produce the same effect for other readers and present a part of myself that people who know me personally or professionally don’t know. Favorite Post -  (not many to choose from) My First Post, I Hope it’s a Good One: This post flowed just as I would want it to. It felt natural writing it and conveyed the excitement I was feeling as I put the words down. The response was positive and energized me to continue. It was a strong entry to the blogging world. Lesson Learned- After my first two posts, I decided that a monthly blog was going to be more my speed. Many blogging experts suggest writing weekly or even multiple times a week, but for me that isn’t possible or even desired at this point. Everyone has a different writing schedule and that is okay. Just because you don’t post once a week does not mean your blog isn’t worthy or you should stop writing all together. I also have learned that graphics go a long way. Some of my favorite blogs use photos, charts, or cartoons. It makes reading them more fun. Lastly, don’t decide that your blog is going to serve one purpose (e.g. an evaluation blog) because you probably have many more stories to tell and thoughts to share that aren’t about that subject area. It would be a disservice to yourself and your readers to not write something you want to share because it doesn’t fit into the box you originally created for yourself. This winter, we’re continuing our occasional series highlighting evaluators who blog. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Bloggers Week: Glenn O’Neil on Intelligent Measurement Bloggers Week: Karen Anderson on On Top Of the Box Evaluation Bloggers Series: Gail Barrington on the Barrington Research Group Blog

"Creativity is intelligence having fun", Albert Einstein. Greetings! I’m Sara Vaca, independent consultant (EvalQuality.com) and recently appointed Creative Advisor of this blog. To start contributing I thought of writing some posts about how creativity intertwines with evaluation. This is Part I of a two-part post. Lesson Learned: Evaluation is a rigorous, systematic transdiscipline. However, evaluators can (and already) use creativity to improve their practice in many different moments and levels. Here are many examples, just digging in our aea365’s archives: Hot Tips: 1. Advocating for evaluation Evaluation is not as well-known as it should be for many citizens and politicians. Many of us find ourselves exploring ways to make evaluation more attractive, interesting and remarkable, at least at our local environment. Examples: Kylie Hutchinson on "O Collective Impact," an Evaluator’s Carol Michael Quinn Patton on Using Children’s Stories to Open up Evaluation Dialogues 2. Making stakeholders engage A demonstrated key factor in an evaluation, our fellows have already encountered this potential problem and shared tips to overcome it: Alicia McCoy on Using Humor and Creativity to Engage Staff in Evaluation Marybeth Neal on Using a Wall to Engage Stakeholders Julie Poncelet, Catherine Borgman-Arboleda, and Jorge Arboleda on Using Participatory Video to Engage Youth in Evaluation in a Creative and Empowering Way Jeanne Hubelbank on Assessing Audience or Client Knowledge in a Sweet Way Jessica Foster on Maximizing Survey Response Rates 3. New ways of using data Evaluation has always relied on data, but other sectors are catching up. Now evaluators have realized that and we are learning new ways in dealing with and using data: Kimberly Kay Lopez on Getting Creative With the Data You Collect and Use for Evaluations! Patti Patrizi on Using Existing Data in New Ways Laura Pryor and Nichole Stewart on Data Science for Evaluators Cameron Norman on The Evaluator-as-Designer   We would love to hear how YOU are using creativity in your evaluation work. Please consider contributing your own aea365 post! (sara.vaca@EvalQuality.com) Look for Part II with more examples of aea365 posts on creativity and evaluation! And even more about creativity and evaluation coming your way soon! Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Sheila B Robinson on Introducing our Newest aea365 Team Members Innovative #Eval Week: Jean King and Laura Pejsa on What We Learned from "Learning by Doing" Cultural Competence Week: Dominica McBride on AEA 2013 and Spreading the Word on Cultural Competence

My name is Ann Zukoski and I am a Senior Research Associate at Rainbow Research, Inc. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1974, Rainbow Research’s mission is to improve the effectiveness of socially-concerned organizations through capacity building, research, and evaluation. Projects range in scale from one-time program evaluations to multi-year, multi-site research studies and designs that explicitly include participatory approaches designed to lead to program improvement. Through my work, I am always looking for creative ways to capture evaluation data. Here is one rad resource and a hot tip on a participatory tool to add to your tool box. Rad Resource: Participatory evaluation approaches are used extensively by international development organizations. This web page is a great resource for exploring different rapid appraisal methods that can be adapted to the US context. ELDIS -http://www.eldis.org/go/topics/resource-guides/participation/participatory-methodology#.UwwFaf1z8ds ELDIS provides descriptions and links to a variety of information sources on participatory evaluation approaches, including online documents, organization’s web sites, databases, library catalogues, bibliographies, and email discussion lists, research project information, map and newspaper collections. Eldis is hosted by the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, U.K. Hot Tip: Evaluators are often asked to identify program impacts and measure key outcomes of community based projects. Impact and outcome measures are often externally determined by the funder. Many times, however, collaborative projects lead to unanticipated outcomes that are seen to be of great value by program participants but are overlooked by formal evaluation designs. One participatory technique, Most Significant Change (MSC), offers an alternative approach to address this issue and can be used to surface promising practices. Most Significant Change Technique (MSC) - MSC is a participatory qualitative data collection process that uses stories to identify the impact of the program. This approach involves a series of steps where stakeholders search for significant program outcomes and deliberate on the value of these outcomes in a systematic and transparent manner. Stakeholders are asked to write stories of what they see as "significant change" and then dialogue with others to select stories of most importance. The goal of the process is to make explicit what stakeholders (program staff, program beneficiaries and others) value as significant change. The process allows participants to gain a clearer understanding of what is and what is not being achieved. The process can be used for program improvement, identifying promising practices as well as to uncover key outcomes by helping evaluators identify areas of change that warrant additional description and measurement. Where to go for more information: http://www.mande.co.uk/docs/MSCGuide.pdf Have you used this tool? Let us all know your thoughts! The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Best of aea365 week. The contributions all this week are reposts of great aea365 blogs from our earlier years. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Ann Zukoski on Participatory Evaluation Approaches Susan Kistler on Free Guides to Participatory Video and the Most Significant Change Technique Veena Pankaj and Myia Welsh on Participatory Analysis: Expanding Stakeholder Involvement in Evaluation

My name is Lija Greenseid. I am a Senior Evaluator, with Professional Data Analysts, Inc. in Minneapolis, MN. We conduct evaluations of stop-smoking programs. Smokers generally have lower education levels than the general population. Therefore, we want to make sure the materials we develop are understandable to smokers. Rad Resource: Use a "readability calculator" to check the reading-level of your written materials. I have used this with program registration forms, survey instruments, consent statements, and other materials. Not surprisingly, the first drafts of my materials are often written at a level only grad students (and evaluators) can understand. With a critical eye and a few tweaks I can often rewrite my materials so that they are at an eighth-grade reading level, much more accessible to the people with whom I want to communicate. A good Readability Calculator can be found here: http://www.editcentral.com/gwt1/EditCentral.html It provides you with both a reading ease score, and a number of different measures of the US school grade level of the text. This blog posting is rated at a high-school reading level. Do you agree? The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Best of aea365 week. The contributions all this week are reposts of great aea365 blogs from our earlier years. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.   Related posts: Lija Greenseid on Using a Readability Calculator DOVP Week: June Gothberg on Keeping it Simple and Intuitive Susan Kistler on Welcoming the Data Visualization & Reporting TIG and DVR Resources

My name is Amy A. Germuth,  and I am Founder and President of EvalWorks, LLC in Durham, NC and blog at EvalThoughts.com. Over the last year I have worked improving my reporting of findings to better meet my client’s needs and have a few great resources to help you do the same. Rad Resource: "Unlearning Some of our Social Scientist Habits" by Jane Davidson (independent consultant and evaluator extraordinaire, as well as AEA member and TIG leader). She added some additional thoughts to this work and presented them at AEA’s 2009 annual conference in Orlando. Her PowerPoint slides for this presentation can be found at: http://bit.ly/7RcDso. Frankly, I think this great article has been overlooked for its valuable contributions. Among other great advice for evaluators (including models or theories but not using them evaluatively and leaping to measurement too quickly), she addresses these common pitfalls when reporting evaluation findings: (1) not answering (and in some cases not even identifying!) the evaluation questions that guided the methodology, (2) reporting results separately by data type or source, and (3) ordering evaluation report sections like a Master’s thesis. This entertaining article and the additional PowerPoint slides really make a case for using the questions that guide the evaluation to guide the report as well. 2015 UPDATE Read Resource: Data visualization can help make reporting more accessible and visually captivating.  There is a great post on "What is data visualization?" and many posts from other aea365 authors. Rad Resource: Why assume all findings have to be reported as a paper?  Try reporting using PowerPoint and heed the advice Garr Reynold’s provides in his great book "Presentation Zen Design" to ensure that you do not subject your clients to DBP (death by PowerPoint). This post is a modified version of a previously published aea365 post in an occasional series, "Best of aea365."  Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Amy Germuth on Reporting Findings Amy Germuth on reports and checklists p2i Week: Laura Beals on Applying p2i to Presentations at Work

My name is Summer N. Jackson, Project Director at Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy a regional, nonprofit membership organization that focuses on advancing the interests of African Americans in philanthropy and address the impact of racial disparity within philanthropic institutions and African American communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had the opportunity to serve as a session scribe at Evaluation 2010 and one of the sessions I attended was session 304: Insights into Foundation Evaluation. I chose this session because I am interested in strategies to develop an organizational learning culture in a foundation. Lessons Learned - Evaluation should be shared throughout the organization Traditionally programs are responsible for engaging in the activities for a given evaluation. In the Pan Canadian system, new federal requirements dictate an organizational level approach with creates an institutional culture of learning rather than the top down approach produced when programs hold the responsibility. Lessons Learned - Create shared values around evaluation When planning to introduce evaluation into an organization, one should try to create opportunities for discussion through facilitated workgroups rather than as a mandate. An approach that seeks to develop shared values around the benefit of inquiry will increase buy-in from participants. Hot Tips - Implementing a New Tool: Start with a prototype Identify challenges and work to enhance quality of data received year by year Complete an informal feasibility study to gradually introduce processes that are more rigorous Develop an actionable plan Work with senior management to increase buy-in and to provide directives to staff Consider using a facilitator to provide evaluation education and training Be explicit about organizational goals and try to help staff understand how their work fits into them Hot Tip - Internal Champions, Open Doors, and Meet & Adjust: When implementing a new evaluative tool or framework in an organization, identify an internal champion that will help promote the tool. Maintain an open door policy after the initial training and offer additionally Technical Assistance (TA) opportunities that are intimate in nature. Lastly, schedule a quarterly/monthly meeting to review data and challenges and readjust when necessary. This will enhance trust and communication between the program staff as well as enhance the quality of data you receive in the end. This post is a modified version of a previously published aea365 post in an occasional series, "Best of aea365." Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. Related posts: Scribing: Summer Jackson on Insights Into Foundation Evaluation Jeff Sheldon on the Readiness for Organizational Learning and Evaluation instrument OL-ECB Week: Jeff Sheldon on using ROLE to Determine an Organization’s Support of Evaluative Inquiry