For July’s journal club Jane Buckley and Monica Hargraves will lead a discussion of their article: The relational nature of Evaluation Capacity Building: Lessons from facilitated evaluation partnerships (Buckley, Hargraves, and Moorman, 2021).
The abstract is: This paper explores the nature and importance of the relationship between Evaluation Capacity Builders (ECBers) and their program partner(s) in the context of the Partnerships for Advancing Character program Evaluation (PACE) Project. PACE, a 3-year initiative supported by the John Templeton Foundation, offered a unique opportunity to initiate, structure, support, and observe evaluation partnerships between an evaluation professional and a program team over 15 months. In this paper, after reviewing pertinent Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) and adult education literature, we report on our qualitative inquiry into the PACE Evaluation Partnerships, in response to the following three research questions: (1) What did PACE participants consider to be positive characteristics of or contributing factors to the Evaluation Partnerships? (2) What did PACE participants identify as negative characteristics of or challenging factors to the partnerships? And (3) Are the patterns of positive/negative characteristics and contributing/challenging factors consistent with the hypothesis that relational qualities are important in Evaluation Capacity Building? The results of this analysis indicate that partnerships that were characterized by relational qualities (e.g., responsiveness, trust, mutual respect) tended to be more successful—in the eyes of the people in those relationships—than those that did not. Both the variety of the relationships described by the participants, as well as the emerging patterns, offer fertile ground for future questions about the relational nature of positive ECB relationships.
Below is the link to the article and it can be accessed if you login via you AEA account:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ev.20445
A Zoom link will be sent out to registrants the day before the event.
The journal club meets the third Wednesday of every month to discuss new and innovative evaluation topics.
AaEA’s monthly journal club features an evaluation article from evaluation journals and the gray literature. The purpose of these meetings is to offer an easy way for people to get a brief review of new topics, tools, and issues in the evaluation community. You are not required to read the article, but, try to if you can. So hop on the phone and sip your favorite beverage while listening to a summary of the article and joining in the discussion.
