Tweet The keynote address to kick of the Monday at SHRM15 in Vegas was Marcus Buckingham. What a great presentation. I will be posting more about his work later. I plan on reading his book. Buckingham talks about employee engagement, but in a different manner than the normal discussion. A few tweetable moments I captured include: #SHRM15 So goes the leader so goes the organization. Per @mwbuckingham ...

I’m Steve Erickson of EMSTAR Research, a community/organizational consulting firm based in Atlanta. For the last 10 years I have served as lead evaluator for the Georgia Family Connection Partnership (GaFCP), a public/private nonprofit that supports a statewide network of "Family Connection" Collaboratives addressing child and family issues in all 159 counties. Georgia is the only state blanketed entirely by such a network. We support local leaders as they continuously assess local data, identify key issues, plan strategically, leverage resources, implement plans, and evaluate performance. The soul of Family Connection is local autonomy with a nudge toward public/private partnerships, prevention, resource leveraging, data use and accountability. I hear an echo of community psychology’s respect for locality and promotion of mutual support networks, prevention, existing resource utilization, and research and action. Don’t you? The GaFCP Evaluation/Outcomes Team is composed of a dozen evaluators representing five private consulting firms and the Georgia State University (GSU) Community Psychology and Public Health programs. A swarm of butterflies is tame by comparison but we manage somehow to get things done. Specific tasks are divided between two main activities: Supporting local evaluation. Accounting for effective practices and outcomes at local, regional, and statewide levels. Hot Tip: Every couple of years our three GSU faculty members cajole a doctoral student whiz in methods and analytics into joining our team. Our first three went on after graduation to work for a major national foundation, a big state university and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - just rewards for the indentured time they put in with us. All three still contribute now and then to our work. These students get most of the credit for several journal publications, as well as a series of evaluation snapshots, produced in collaboration with the GaFCP Communication and Community Support teams and designed primarily for readers from local Collaboratives. Our recent format is to feature a finding, a local collaborative story illustrating the finding, and tips for how local readers might replicate the strategies involved. Lesson Learned: I can’t say enough about how important it is for those evaluating collaboration to actually collaborate. Former Savannah mayor Otis Johnson, a pioneer of this work in Georgia, says "everybody talkin’ ’bout collaboration ain’t collaboratin’." Our evaluation has flourished when we were fully engaged with other GaFCP teams and local collaborative members, staff and evaluators, and floundered when we weren’t. We are flourishing now because we have other GaFCP members on our team and they have say in our processes and products. We work incessantly to do the same on other GaFCP teams. We also include local evaluators in development of evaluation requirements and tools, and in peer reviews of products. The American Evaluation Association is celebrating CP TIG Week with our colleagues in the Community Psychology Topical Interest Group. The contributions all week come from CP TIG members. 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 CoP Week: Donna Campell on Evaluating Professional Development: Guskey Level 3 - Organizational Support and Learning SW TIG Week: Katrina Brewsaugh on Why You Want a Social Worker on Your Evaluation Team SEA Week: Dr. Fred Seamon on Evaluation Careers in the Private Sector

Greetings! I’m Sara Vaca (@visualbrains), independent consultant at EvalQuality.com and Creative Advisor of this blog. Evaluators are very interesting people, whose experiences are as worth exploring as the people we work with. So I had this idea: wouldn’t it be great to know the top 3 stories/moments that most influenced each evaluator? I think it would be very inspiring… And I’m in no way the most interesting evaluator I know, but to get this started, these are my 3 most remarkable moments that influenced my career as an evaluator: When I was not yet involved in -only interested- in the professional field of Evaluation, I randomly ran into Patricia Rogers on twitter and I decided to go through the people she was following. When I finished going through the 400+ long list of organizations and people she was following, one hour later, I had lost track of time or space and I had the amazing feeling of being back from planet "Evaluation." Later within my M.A. in evaluation, I had as assignment to read "The SAGE Handbook of Evaluation" (Shaw, Greene & Mark) where Eleanor Chelimsky recalled the 8 year process of evaluating U.S. military nuclear triad policy. Wow, I thought. If you can evaluate this, you can evaluate "anything." Finally, last year during the European Evaluation Society (EES) conference in Dublin, I had the honor of having dinner one night with lovely Lovely Dhillon. Engaging with everybody as she usually does, we were having a great time with the kindest Irish staff. At some point, they left our table and she turned to me with excitement and said: "People are my favorite!!!" The sentence made us laugh for a while…, but again, wow, I thought: if that is not evaluation, what is? And I think these would be my three most remarkable experiences. Picture from Morguefile.com fotoactionphotography If you liked the idea, please think of your 3 stories and you are willing to share them, please send them (sara.vaca@evalquality.com). Depending on how many people are in, we will do a thematic week with them. Or make it a regular post for some time… Or we could even gather them into an eBook and share it. Looking forward to hearing from you! 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.

Notes from the Salesforce Dreamforce Conference Matt Maher, Technical Architect and I were at the Salesforce conference for the last few days.  There were several interesting announcements regarding the integration of Microsoft technologies and Salesforce. During the session, several integration solutions were displayed, some developed by Salesforce and others developed by Microsoft.  Below is a summary of the some of the integrations / solutions that were demonstrated: Salesforce1 support for Windows Phone. Salesforce1 is Salesforce’s mobile development platform Salesforce for Outlook support for OWA and Outlook on the desktop Excel PowerBI Data Connector for Salesforce Mail Merge and Salesforce reports for Excel OneDrive integration with Salesforce FILEs SharePoint Library integration with Salesforce FILEs Chatter for SharePoint Integration of SharePoint files in Chatter .NET Libraries that allow development using C#/ASP.NET from Visual Studio using Salesforce objects Ability to search SharePoint repository from Salesforce We will be sharing more on each of these in our subsequent posts.  You can visit our netwovenblogs.com for more information.  Netwoven works to bring together both Microsoft and Salesforce technologies together.  We actively monitor developments by both of these companies. The recent announcements is great news for many organizations but at the same time presents many questions too.  Some common questions customers might have are: Should I use Chatter or Yammer? How should I integrate Yammer with Salesforce? Should I use Power BI for Office 365 or Sales Analytics Cloud or both? How can I integrate my SharePoint and OneDrive better with Salesforce? How do I search across Salesforce and SharePoint repositories? Please email to us at ntenany@netwoven.com or mmaher@netwoven.com if you would like to discuss more. Please find my other posts from the same series below: Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 1 - Why these companies need to collaborate Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 3 - Analytics Cloud from Salesforce

Tweet   Steve Browne’s self-proclamation. The day started with a HUGE dose of Steve Browne. If you are not familiar with Steve he is an HR executive in Ohio. He is an advocate of culture, not just good culture, but great culture. Some of my tweets from that session include: HR should not do things they should "do" people! Culture that rocks does not include button down Oxford shirts that...

Hi! I’m Myia Welsh, an independent consultant working with nonprofit and community organizations. Much of my work is done with organizations that provide services to survivors of human trafficking. What’s that, you ask? Trafficking is any enterprise where someone makes a profit from the exploitation of another by force, fraud or coercion. Just like the sale of drugs or weapons, the sale of humans occurs both in the U.S. and around the world. Find out more about human trafficking here. Lesson Learned: Conducting evaluation with these organizations has required me to learn my way around engaging trauma survivors in evaluation - especially in focus groups. Focus groups with trauma survivors can be challenging if you don’t know what to expect. They require slightly different planning and facilitation skill. I recommend the following preparations: Understand what you’re dealing with. Do some reading on trauma, so that you know how to recognize dynamics in the room. Rad Resource: The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has great information on understanding what trauma is and how it manifests. Review your protocol for trigger questions. Stick with what’s essential to the evaluation. Consult knowledgeable stakeholders to help you be aware of causing potential harm, and brainstorm about how to avoid it. Be prepared for an emotional response, and have a plan to handle it with respect and support. An abrupt or uncomfortable response from the facilitator could silence participants. So, check your reactions. Have tissues ready in case of tears and tactile toys/objects around to help manage anxiety. Make safety a factor in your planning: Where will this group feel safe? Physical space and location should be taken into consideration. Will bringing additional note takers or co-facilitators into the situation enhance or threaten perceived safety? Check your facilitation practices. In most focus groups, a zoned-out participant would be prompted to participate. With a group of trauma survivors, this might be a signal that the reflection brought on by the discussion is getting overwhelming. Have a plan ready so that you can recognize it and continue on without disruption. Consider a non-verbal cue that you can set up in the beginning, a colored index card for instance. A participant can set their card on the table as a signal that this is getting tough. Make sure everyone knows that they can step away if they need to. What’s your wrap-up plan? Have a strategy ready for ending in a positive way, soothing the emotions that may have emerged. Guide discussion to future hopes or recent accomplishments. Lesson Learned: Even if it might be emotional or messy, service recipients are key stakeholders who’s voice cannot be left out of an evaluation. 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.

Dreamforce 2014 Announcement - Analytics Cloud from Salesforce.com I continue my series on Microsoft and Salesforce Collaboration.  In this article, I will be discussing about a latest analytical offering from Salesforce.  If you would like to read my previous posts on the Microsoft and Salesforce collaboration, you can go to the following links: Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 1 - Why these companies need to collaborate Microsoft and Salesforce - Part 2 - Notes from the Dreamforce Conference What is Analytics Cloud and Wave? Analytics cloud is the latest offering from Salesforce announced last week as their analytical platform.  It is based on a company that Salesforce bought about 2 years ago.  Salesforce also hired a former co-founder of Business Objects to lead the development of this platform. Wave is the platform on which the analytics cloud is built. When is Analytics Cloud available? Although Wave is available immediately but customers have to ask for getting it enabled by speaking with their Account Executive (AE).  This leads me to believe that either the product is not fully ready or they are organizationally not ready to manage the inflow if the product is wildly successful. How is Analytics Cloud available? You must be an existing Salesforce.com customer to be able to avail of the features of Wave. How do I use Analytics Cloud if I am not a Salesforce.com customer? Currently you will not be able to use it. What is exciting about the Analytics Cloud? Excellent visualization capabilities Tightly integrated with Salesforce.com Fast in-memory technology Slick mobile interface Intuitive Does Analytics Cloud integrate data sources other than Salesforce.com data? According to Salesforce.com, it does integrate using third party products such as Informatica, or Dell Boomi.  I did not find any sessions on this.  There were demonstrations on the floor but I did not see any demonstrations with data being integrated from third party sources. Is Analytics Cloud easy to use? I was invited to test drive the Analytics Cloud in one of the sessions with about 150 people.  I found it easy to use for basic reporting. What is the pricing of Analytics Cloud? It is available in two licensing models: Builder user license         $3,000 per year Explorer user license      $1,500 per year For additional information on licensing, click here. What mobile platforms does Analytics Cloud support? The official story is that it will support IOS, Android and Windows, however, all demos were on IOS and I believe the first release supports IOS currently. Does Analytics Cloud provide collaboration capabilities? It is integrated with Chatter. My observation If you are completely immersed into the Salesforce ecosystem and can afford it, you may want to consider it otherwise there are less expensive options available to provide reporting / analysis capabilities The platform may be available only to select few customers for some time before it is opened to a broader customer base.  Plan accordingly Deep dive is required to assess their advanced features In my next post, I will be comparing the components of the Analytics Cloud with the Microsoft products.

  The morning of the last day of the #SHRM15 conference started with Dr. Oz. I was prepared not to be all that interested in what he had to say, but he was actually pretty interesting. Here are some of his pearls of wisdom from my Tweets: HR is the cutting edge of healthcare because we communicate wellness to our employees. Not a typical view of HR. Dr. Oz asks us to message three people who like you...

We are Judy Savageau and Len Levin from the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Health Policy and Research (CHPR) and Lamar Soutter Library, respectively. Back in November, we introduced you to a week’s worth of lessons learned, hot tips and rad resources for how the literature (written and electronic) and various databases provide key information and tools that we need to conduct all types of evaluation projects (see "Related Posts" for some of these, or type "literature search" in the search box to find all of them). Partnering with our medical school’s library and its resources has been key to CHPR’s many successes. We wanted to continue these discussions with this blog on "What Does Today’s Librarian Look Like?" Not too long ago, accessing public libraries and all of their resources was done almost exclusively via paper-based systems where you needed to be present ‘in’ the library to access all of its resources. Connection to a reference librarian was ‘physical’ - mostly in-person and sometimes via a land-line telephone. Library patrons accessed print resources through large tomes of written words. So what’s changed to help improve information needs for our evaluation work? Today’s library is more active than passive. Information is available in real-time and most of it electronically accessible. Today’s librarian is often working ‘outside’ of the library’s physical space partnering on-site with key stakeholder groups and/or evaluation teams. And, when necessary, the librarian and his/her resources can easily have a virtual presence in the work we do. Lessons Learned: New partnerships: Today’s librarian doesn’t necessarily need a "building" to be effective. They don’t always sit at a Reference Desk waiting for a question to come to them (but if you call your local library, you WILL find someone to help you). Instead, they work where the information is needed whether with an individual or a team. Active approach: Before, if you were researching dragons in medieval castles, you would have to come by the library every now and then to see if there was any new information. Now, if you work closely with a librarian and they know that your interest is dragons and medieval castles, they will push information to you as it comes across their radar. And since librarians are usually working on many different projects with many different people or teams simultaneously, it is likely that they will come across new things often. There are a lot of efficiencies in library resources when librarians are supporting multiple teams/projects. Hot Tip: Instead of just consulting with a librarian on your next project, consider adding one to your project team. Having a librarian as part of your team will help to more efficiently identify needed resources and access them. 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.

Is your organization currently using SharePoint Online? Are you planning to leverage the power of Microsoft’s BI to power your organization’s analytical needs or have just purchased licenses for Power BI? If the answer is "Yes" to either of the above two questions, then it is very important to understand how these two solutions from Microsoft talk to each other to provide a robust collaborative environment. Let’s say for all practical purposes your organization has purchased SharePoint Online (O365) licenses. As part of the standard set up let’s assume that your organization has set up 3 different sites namely Team, Public and Collaboration (Figure 1). The tabs in O365 portal looks something like this (Figure 2). Figure 1 Figure 2 Now once your organization subscribes to Power BI, your organization specific Power BI instance gets created within the O365 instance. You will now see a Power BI tab getting added to your O365 portal (Figure 3). Figure 3 Clicking on this Power BI takes you to the Power BI page. Here an individual who has been given access Power BI can view the different sites that have Power BI instantiated, monitor the usage of data, queries, reports that have been uploaded by you and shared to others. It also provides you the links to various favorite reports and sites. One cannot upload new documents or collaborate using this page. Refer Figure 4 below. Figure 4 Once the Power BI subscription is activated, a Power BI SharePoint App (Figure 5) gets attached to the site contents of each of the site instantiated. Figure 5 The next step is to attach/add the Power BI from the site content of the site to invoke the Power BI capabilities to that site.  Once the Power BI App is attached/added to a site, a link gets created from the O365 site to the Power BI site.  Upon clicking on the Power BI app after adding, it will take you to a Power BI page from where new documents/reports can added, shared and perform Q&A (Figure 6) Figure 6 We can add/invoke Power BI functionalities to as many sites as our organization’s O365 tenant will allow us to do.  We can upload documents from to each of these Power BI sites and collaborate with different users within the organizations (Figure 7) Figure 7 Hope this was helpful. Happy Learning!!!

  Developing relationships is a career-saving move.   I have written a number of times that the future of HR is to keep the "human" in human resources. As technology advances and jobs consisting of tasks become increasingly automated the one area that will not be automated is that of "relationships." People connections Steve Browne, the Executive Director of HR for LaRosa, Inc., is acknowledged by many to be...

Overview You have SharePoint 2013 On Premises Deployment.  When you try to open the files from your SharePoint sites, with file extension .MHT or .MHTML, the files get opened via Microsoft Word. You want these files to be opened by your Browser instead. Cause The file open behavior is driven by DOCICON.xml file under the SharePoint configuration file.  This file is located under - C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\15\TEMPLATE\XML folder. In this case, MS Word in configured as the file open application DOCICON.xml file like below. Resolution You will need to update this setting like below in the DOCICON.XML on all the SharePoint Application and Web Front End server of the Farm. Perform the following changes on each server such that the Edittext/OpenControl/OpenApp is not set in which case the browser end user client File Association settings will take precedence. Where by default the file extension association is Browse for .MHT and .MHTML on the user client desktops. Before: After: After saving the above settings, restart your IIS server to re-cache the new settings to take effect.

  Recently released, Dice’s campaign to find the best tech talent has taken a creative turn. Actual tech candidates are seen posed in their latest #HottestTalent campaign. In an effort to take the stereotyped "old IT" to a revamped, modernized version of the tech department. The platform is to help companies who struggle in finding qualified talent and guide them towards the candidates that are the best fit. Game Changer Find the hottest talent. The billboards are featured in some of the most densely populated tech areas...

My name is Josh Twomey, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine & Community Health, at UMass Medical School’s Center for Health Policy and Research. Perhaps you have noticed the term ‘Bayesian’ popping up now and then in the evaluators’ break room. I certainly have, and in recent months, set out on a statistical journey to find out why. In this two-part entry, I would like to share some discoveries of this journey. Part 1 includes a basic overview of Bayesian analysis. Part 2 (coming tomorrow) gives an example of how this may benefit our work as evaluators. One note of caution: This may seem less relevant to those doing strictly qualitative data collection and reporting! Most of us are trained in Null Hypothesis Significance Testing (NHST) whereby we reject a null hypothesis (p < .05) or fail to reject the null (p > .05). This decision is justified by the data we collect, but does not take into account past research findings or expert opinion. Bayesian analysis differs from NHST in that past knowledge is included in our analysis, thereby having a direct influence on our conclusions. The first step of Bayesian analysis is to quantify this past knowledge via a prior distribution or prior for short. Using priors we are able to specify distribution(s) of parameters (e.g., means, standard deviations) we are interested in. In cases where we have a lot of prior information, we may set up narrow distributions (informative priors). When we do not have a lot of prior information, we may set up very wide distributions (noninformative priors). Priors are used to weight the likelihood of our collected data to produce the posterior distribution. Thus, the posterior is a result of past knowledge updated by our collected data. It is from this posterior where samples can be drawn and conclusions about our evaluations are made. Hot Tips: In addition to allowing for the use of past knowledge, advantages of Bayesian statistics include: Decision-making tools such as Bayes Factors and Highest Density Intervals (HDIs), which can be easier for stakeholders to understand compared to p values and confidence intervals. No need to limit the number of hypotheses you wish to test with your data for fear of inflated Type I error (which in my experience can frustrate stakeholders). Better capacity to work with Ns that are small, limiting our ability to detect differences/trends, or large where differences may be detected due to large samples, not meaningful differences. Rad Resources: Bayesian Statistics for the Social Sciences by David Kaplan Doing Bayesian Data Analysis by John Kruschke For quick reference/definitions of NHST, p-values, and Bayesian inference click HERE. 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.

Overview You are using SharePoint 2013 with SSRS 2012 in the SharePoint Integrated mode. In the SharePoint Reporting Libraries, you will see below error when you try access the ECB menus related Reporting Services caching and subscriptions options. Manage Processing Options Manage Cache Refresh Plans   Sorry, something went wrong An error occurred within the report server database.  This may be due to a connection failure, timeout or low disk condition within the database. —> Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ReportServerStorageException: An error occurred within the report server database.  This may be due to a connection failure, timeout or low disk condition within the database. —> System.Exception: For more information about this error navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors Cause Due to lack of complete configuration steps in the SSRS Service Application, you will experience these errors. Resolution: Method - 1 (Recommended) Select ‘SQL Reporting Services Service Application’ from Manage service applications page, under Central Administration. Click ‘Provision Subscriptions and Alerts’ Click ‘Download Script’ Run these scripts on SQL Server Method - 2 (Manual) First you need to verify ‘SQL Service’, ‘SQL Agent Service’ services account are added to RSExecRole role on Reporting Service, Reporting Services Temp, master, msdb databases. Secondly and foremost, SQL Reporting Services Service Application Pool account is also added in RSExecRole. For instance, when user clicks ‘Manage Processing Options’ from report properties, behind the scene database connection is made using ‘Integrated Security = true’.

This is Josh Twomey again from UMass Medical School’s Center for Health Policy and Research. As promised in yesterday’s Part 1 posting, I wanted to walk through an example demonstrating aspects of Bayesian analysis that evaluators might find advantageous. Part 1 mentioned the use of the Bayes Factor (BF) as a decision-making tool. BFs tell us the degree one hypothesis is supported by the data in relation to how much another hypothesis is supported by the data. Thus, a BF is an odds ratio showing us which hypothesis is more likely. Now, let’s look at that example. Suppose you are evaluating the effectiveness of a health psychology program in helping patients manage chronic disease. As part of the evaluation, you measure the self-efficacy of 200 patients managing their diabetes before and after working with a health psychologist. Traditionally, you could do this with a paired t-test of patients’ pre and post self-efficacy scores. As good evaluators, we would begin this analysis with some idea (based on review of similar evaluations or literature) as to the effectiveness of our program. However, in a traditional test, this prior knowledge cannot be factored into our analysis. Our test would produce t and p values such as t = - 3.19, p < .05. With this result we can state post scores are significantly higher than pre scores, but we cannot state the extent to which this conclusion is more likely than our null hypothesis. With Bayesian analysis, we conduct this paired sample t-test but weight our data by our prior knowledge. For example, if past evaluations tell us that we should expect small effect sizes, we can specify a prior whereby small effect sizes are more likely than larger ones. In this Bayesian framework, a t = -3.19 corresponds to a BF of 10.1. This means that our hypothesis that post scores are different than pre scores is 10.1 times more likely than a hypothesis of no difference. Hot Tips: The example above highlights 3 advantages of Bayesian analysis: Prior knowledge is incorporated into the analysis as our data is weighted by this knowledge; We are given direct odds associated with our conclusion; and The interpretation of the BF is a clear, intuitive interpretation of our results for stakeholders to understand. Lessons Learned: Over the course of my journey, which is far from over, I have learned that Bayesian analysis is complex - full of intimidating terms such as conjugate priors and Markov Chains. But considering its advantages, as well as growing demand in our field, I have found the journey to be well worth it. Rad Resources: Bayesian Factor calculators and literature can be found at: pcl.missouri.edu. 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.

  Culture is more than just a hot topic, it’s not just a buzzword, it’s a requirement. It’s a hard business principle that drives your employees. In the increasingly competitive market (and talent market), it has never been more important to evaluate what kind of culture you need your organization to be. The malleability of this internal society has to be relevant to those on the front line of your organization - your team. Understand the significance of the buy-in, the intangible nature, the dominos of change and you can effectively alter your culture… after all - it is yours...

Hello Evaluation Learners! I’m Sheila B. Robinson, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor. Today, I’m writing about AEA’s Summer Evaluation Institute, a fabulous learning opportunity coming up soon. Anyone who knows me knows that two things I love are learning, and meeting with evaluation colleagues, and this is the perfect opportunity to do both. Registration is now open for the 2015 AEA Summer Evaluation Institute - May 31 - June 3 in Atlanta, GA. Here’s a quick preview of just a few of the high quality courses offered. Note: Descriptions are truncated, so please visit the site for complete descriptions: Rad Resources:  An Executive Summary is Not Enough: Effective Evaluation Reporting Techniques with Kylie Hutchinson Reporting is an important skill for evaluators who care about seeing their results disseminated widely and recommendations actually implemented, but there are alternatives to the traditional lengthy report. This interactive workshop will present an overview of four key principles for effective reporting and engage participants in a discussion of its role in effective evaluation. Culturally Responsive Evaluation (CRE): Theory to Practice and Back Again with Rodney K. Hopson and Karen E. Kirkhart This workshop addresses the theory that grounds Culturally Responsive Evaluation (CRE) and the strategies that bring it to life in evaluation practice. Presenters set the context with a brief discussion of the centrality of culture in evaluation and the history of how the evaluation profession is coming to a clearer appreciation of culture. Against this backdrop, CRE’s development is highlighted and key elements of the CRE framework are identified. The workshop then transitions from theory to practice. Qualitative Approaches to Evaluation: Core Concepts for Defensible Practice with Jennifer C. Greene This workshop offers an introduction to the core stances and principles of qualitative approaches to evaluation, with a focus on overall design and the collection, analysis, and reporting of interview and observation data. Needs Assessment - Basic Ideas, a Guiding Model, and Hands-on Work with Several Interesting Methods with James W. Altschuld After establishing the ABCs of needs assessment (NA) such as concepts, terms, a guiding model, and a brief overview of methods often employed in the NA process, participants will be involved in several hands-on activities to demonstrate what they entail and how they bring the NA process to life. Rad Resources: The Institute also opens with two concurrent pre-institute workshops: Practical Methods for Improving Evaluation Communication with Stephanie Evergreen Introduction to Evaluation with Thomas Chapel Hot Tip: Registration is still open for the 2015 AEA Summer Evaluation Institute - May 31 - June 3 in Atlanta, GA but act fast! Courses do fill up! I wish I could share the rest of the 26 great courses here! 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.

  Constant emails, text messages and everything between can make it difficult to create a set of boundaries for your professional life. Millennials outwardly crave that balance between home and the office, but other workforce generations are partial to the idea as well. Setting professional boundaries, whether it’s saying "no" more often or truly leaving work at the office when you’re done for the day, is the first step towards the work-life balance you want. "No" is Okay You have dozens of things to...

Hi, we are Pei-Pei Lei and Carla Hillerns from the Office of Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Have you ever selected an answer to a survey question without reading all of the choices? Maybe you paid more attention to the first choice than the rest? Today, we’d like to share a technique that helps to minimize the impact of these types of scenarios - randomized ordering of survey response options. Randomizing the order of response options may improve data quality by reducing the order effect in your survey. When there is a list of response options, respondents often have a tendency of selecting the most prominent. For example, in a paper survey, the first option may be most apparent. In a phone survey, the last option may be most memorable. If implementing an online survey, there may be a tendency to choose from the middle of a long list - because the center is more prominent. By randomizing the order, all options have the same possibility of appearing in each response position. In Example A below, "Direct mail" appears in the top spot. However, in Example B, the responses have been randomly reassigned and "Television" now appears at the top. Hot Tips: Do not randomize the order if the response options are better suited to a pre-determined sequence, such as months of the year or alphabetization, or if using a validated instrument that needs to maintain the full survey as developed. If the response list is divided into sub-categories, you can randomize the category order as well as the items within each category. If your list includes "Other (Please specify: __________)" or "None of the above", keep these at the bottom so the question makes sense! If using the same set of response options for multiple questions, apply the first randomized ordering to the subsequent questions to avoid confusion. Randomization is not a cure for all questionnaire design challenges. For example, respondents probably won’t pay as much attention to each response option if the list is extremely long or the options are excessively wordy. So be reasonable in your design. Lesson Learned: It’s easy to administer randomization in web and telephone surveys if your survey platform supports this function. A mail survey will require multiple versions of the questionnaire. You’ll also need to account for these multiple versions as part of the data entry process to ensure that responses are coded accurately.  Rad Resources: The Encyclopedia of Survey Research Methods offers more information on response order effects. Check with your survey vendor or survey platform on the functionality that’s available to you. 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.

Hello from Florent and Margaret in Sydney! We are two seasoned evaluators from ARTD Consultants, an Australian public policy consultancy firm providing services in evaluation, research and strategy. As more Australian government services and programs are delivered through partnerships, evaluators need to find better partnership evaluation methods. Faced with the challenge of evaluating partnerships, we quickly realised that there are a number of methods out there: partnership assessment surveys of varying types, social network analysis, collaboration assessment, integration measure, etc. But which one should we choose? Having looked at a number of these we felt that choosing one would not enable us to see what was really happening at all levels of the partnership. So, in our most recent partnership evaluation, we combined some of these methods to get a more complete picture of the partnership. The three we chose were: a partnership survey (adapted from the Nuffield Partnership Assessment Tool), an integration measure (based on the Human Service Integration Measure developed by Brown and colleagues in Canada) and Social Network Analysis (using UCINET). The diagram below represents our conceptual framework, with each method looking at the partnership at a different level: overall, between organisations and departments, and between individuals. Lesson learned #1: A key benefit of combining partnership assessment methods is that it enables you to look at the partnership at different levels. Adding in-depth interviews or other qualitative methods to the mix will allow you to explore further and drill down into underlying mechanisms, perceptions of what works for whom, experiences of difficulties and suggestions for improvement. Lesson learned #2: Partnerships are abstract/ intangible evaluation objects and evaluations of partnerships often lack data about what is happening on the ground. Adding methods to quantify and substantiate partnership activities and outcomes will make your evaluation more robust and the findings easier to explain to stakeholders. Lesson learned #3: Combining methods sits within the good old mixed-methods tradition. Various metaphors are used to describe the benefits of integrated analysis in mixed-methods research (see Bazeley, 2010). In this case, the selected methods are combined ‘for completion’, ‘for enhancement’ and as ‘pointers to a more significant whole’. 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.

  "Find buttons we can push to make a change overall." - Ben Eubanks (@beneubanks), Analyst, Brandon Hall Group  Whether your business goals (or concerns) are centered around alignment, sales or even revenue, HR most likely has a solution that can help solve the problem. For many business problems, there’s a solution from HR that can fix the root of the problem. All you need to do is integrate HR practices into the business strategy and include them as an integral part...

  With over 600 vendors, about 200 sessions, daily Smart Stage, and thousands of attendees, SHRM 2015 was successful in educating HR pros and novices in trending ideas and practices that can give HR a seat at the table. Between sessions with Marcus Buckingham and the more intimate ones with those presenting on the Smart Stage like Blake McCammon and Stacey Carroll, the conference this year revitalized attendees. Reviving New Thoughts Sharing experiences with other professionals in your field dusts off the excitement around HR. Kari Chinn, Human Resources Manager at...

My name is Eva Guenther, I am a Project Manager for a for-profit, employee-owned US Government (USG) contractor in Washington, DC. I am responsible for the successful implementation of USG funded projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). While my heart beats for evaluation it is not the primary focus of my role and responsibilities. Here are a few tips on how I support the local project teams from afar and ensure excellent data driven decision making and monitoring and evaluation happens on the projects. Hot Tip: Establish a culture of data driven decision-making. Evaluation is often an afterthought and treated as if it were the sole the responsibility of the evaluation team rather than the entire project team. I try to set the expectations from the start that we should measure the outputs and outcomes for of all activities so that the team wants to know this data and proactively seeks it. Hot Tip: Get involved early and set dates for revisits. After award I help operationalize our evaluation plan with the local team, work with them on regular data quality assurance activities and review evaluation data in regular reports to the client(s). Hot Tip: Use web-based tools for data sharing. All project team members, often dispersed, should know the outputs and outcomes of project activities. Web-based tools make that easier. The company I work for has a proprietary project management tool that includes an evaluation module that facilitates easy capturing and sharing of evaluation data. This makes checking progress easy for everybody easy, including for myself from the US. Hot Tip: Use data visualization. USG funded projects are heavy on narrative centric reports. I help our implementation teams on the ground to better tell the project’s story through data visualization and web-based interactive maps. This has led to deeper conversations as the information is more accessible. It also has led to outcome and impact data being shared outside the immediate project circle as it did not require a deep background on to understand it. Rad Resource: Get inspired by others. There are a lot of brilliant minds out there so looking at other’s infographics has given me great ideas for how to explain a project output or outcome better with the help of an image. I have drawn lots of inspirations from these blogs: http://dailyinfographic.com/ http://www.visualizing.org/ http://www.coolinfographics.com/ Try out one of the free resources for how to create infographics: http://www.creativebloq.com/infographic/tools-2131971 Lessons Learned: Keep up-to-date with new developments in data collection. Mobile data collection, sentiment analysis and other approaches and tools can be helpful for the local teams where resources are often scarce. 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.