All evaluation practitioners can benefit from learning about evaluation approaches regardless of their experience level or methodological expertise. Why? Because a firm grounding in evaluation approaches:
- expands your imagination about what’s possible in evaluations
- connects your practice to the big ideas in evaluation
- increases your professional agility
Expand Your Evaluation Imagination*
Learning about evaluation approaches is an opportunity for you, as a busy evaluator, to step outside the demands of your immediate work to consider what’s possible in your practice. And not just what’s possible but also what’s optimal for advancing equity, maximizing impact, and enhancing capacity for those involved.
(*Props to Tom Schwandt for introducing the idea of the “evaluation imagination” and to our colleague Lyssa Wilson Becho for bringing it to our attention via her dissertation.)
Connect Your Practice
Many evaluators conduct meaningful and impactful evaluations without learning about different evaluation approaches. Many evaluation practices—like involving the people affected by a program in decision-making about an evaluation—have become commonplace in our field. Learning about evaluation approaches will acquaint you with the origins of some of these practices. You’ll learn terms and concepts that give weight and meaning to practices that may seem like little more than habit.
Knowing how your evaluation practices align with some of the big ideas and thinkers in evaluation will deepen your confidence, give you more grounding for your decisions, and even heighten your credibility.
Increase your Agility
Evaluation approaches equip evaluators with different ways of thinking about evaluation, which helps inform situational decision-making. Here are two simple examples:
- People who were taught (or assume) that evaluation is mainly about measuring whether a program achieves its goals might conclude that programs without clear goals can’t be evaluated. Evaluators who have learned about different evaluation approaches know of several other strategies for focusing an evaluation—and are aware of the risks associated with focusing exclusively on program goals.
- Some evaluators might assume that having a language translator convert a questionnaire from English to the preferred language of survey respondents is sufficient. Evaluators who have learned about culturally responsive and equitable evaluation know that translated instruments also need to be examined with both a grammatical and cultural lens to ensure the wording makes sense to the people who will take the survey (not just the translator).
How Evaluation Approaches Relate to Evaluation Theory
Evaluation approaches are one aspect of evaluation theory, which encompasses both scholarship and practical guidance about evaluation. Evaluation theory addresses a wide range of topics like these:
- the role of evaluation in society
- the underlying logic of evaluation
- the use and influence of evaluation
- the role of culture and privilege in evaluation
- how evaluations should be conducted
The last point above – how to conduct evaluations – is a key focus of many evaluation approaches. Different approaches emphasize different aspects of practice, such as the following:
- what issues evaluators should pay attention to in an evaluation
- how to focus an evaluation
- whom to involve in the evaluation process
- how to make evaluations useful
- how to conduct evaluations to advance social justice
In short, theoretical approaches to program evaluation are sets of ideas about how to think about and conduct evaluations. Learning about different approaches can help evaluators strengthen their practice and expand their thinking.
Ready to Learn or Brush Up on Evaluation Approaches?
In Valeo’s newest online course, Introduction to Theoretical Approaches to Program Evaluation, you will learn the salient elements of six important evaluation approaches and tips for implementing them.
The featured approaches include the following:
- Collaborative Approaches to Evaluation
- Context, Process, Input, Product Evaluation
- Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation
- Goal-Free Evaluation
- Program Theory-Driven Evaluation
- Utilization-Focused Evaluation
As with all Valeo’s courses, you'll receive a certificate summarizing what you learned upon completing the course (which takes about three hours). Each approach has a downloadable overview that you can use as a quick refresher as you start putting the approaches into practice.
About the Course Authors
Lori Wingate and Kelly Robertson work at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University and have Ph. D.s in interdisciplinary evaluation. Lori coauthors the Program Evaluation: Alternative Approaches and Practical Guidelines (5th ed.) and has led 75 workshops and webinars on diverse evaluation topics. You can read more about Lori here. Kelly has extensive experience conducting social justice-focused evaluations and has been featured in webinars hosted by the American Evaluation Association, including its Graduate Education Diversity Initiative, EvaluATE, and the Vera Institute. You can read more about Kelly here. They have written many evaluation plans for proposals submitted to an array of funders and served on funding agency review panels. Together, they have conducted research on evaluation plans included in proposals to a federal agency, spanning 17 years. They coedited a book titled, Core Concepts in Evaluation Classic Writings and Contemporary Commentary with two other colleagues.
