Intervention programs are open systems that must withstand the disturbances of the environments in which they are implemented if they are to thrive. Stakeholders can benefit from proactive insights related to potential program malfunction or failure. Evaluators have not developed approaches to serve this preventive function. This study proposes…

This paper reviews the use of multiple trials, defined as multiple sites or multiple arms in a single evaluation and replications, in evaluating social programs. After defining key terms, the paper discusses the rationales for conducting multiple trials, which include increasing sample size to increase statistical power; identifying the most…

This article presents a new tool called Critical Evaluation Capital (CEC) designed to address issues of equity and social justice in program evaluation. CEC is grounded in the tenants of critical race theory and inspired by Yosso's work on community cultural wealth which raises critical issues of positionality and access. CEC is a system for…

The field of evaluation has experienced greater professionalization in the areas of evaluator education and training. Growth in these areas included sensitivity to issues of diversity, with efforts to attract and retain evaluators of color. Currently, there is limited scholarship on navigating a world with more opportunity but still dealing with…

This brief report describes the conception, development, and use of a rubric in evaluating the feasibility of a new program. The evaluators searched for a meta-analytic tool to help organize ideas about what data to collect, and why, in order to create a detailed story of feasibility of implementation for the client. The main advantage of using…

Advocacy outcomes are not self-evident. Identifying advocacy outcomes is extremely difficult because they are often intangible, arising from (personal) interactions, and they are not always traceable. This challenges conventional evaluation methods, which is recognized in the advocacy evaluation literature. However, current evaluation methods…

This article shares lessons from the field with program evaluations in the English-Speaking Commonwealth Caribbean (ESCC) region. The research highlighted that the challenges faced by evaluators working in the ESCC are quite similar to those experienced by evaluators elsewhere. However, the findings note the impact of the region's colonial past…

Collective impact (CI) is a structured approach that helps drive multi-sector collaborations to address social problems through systems changes. While the CI approach is gaining popularity, practitioners experience challenges in evaluating its implementation and intended outcomes. We conducted a systematic scoping review to understand evaluation…

"Integrative evaluation" is an approach with two main phases: identification of plausible rival hypotheses and integration of rival hypotheses. The first phase may correspond to traditional adversary evaluation, whereas the second phase, that is not included in adversary evaluation, requires integrative thinking which can be applied when…

Our third article on the history of evaluation use affirms its importance in evaluation practice and related literature. It first highlights the centrality of use in the field's professionalizing documents, extant theories, and the persistence of continuing research. Next, it discusses the challenge of evaluation theories in general, including the…

Youth participatory evaluation (YPE) engages young people in the evaluation process. Over the last 20 years, the field has emerged, but more work is needed as evaluators explore the potential for youth participation within their own evaluation practices. This article describes a practice-oriented matrix for visualizing and conceptualizing the role…

Community-based partnerships are integral to mental health programming and research. However, there are limited published guidelines that apply the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR), especially within the context of supporting vulnerable youth populations. This article demonstrates the application of the CBPR principles…

This article examines factors that could have influenced whether evaluations of U.S. government--funded foreign assistance programs completed in 2015 had considered unintended consequences. Logit regression models indicate that the odds of considering unintended consequences were increased when all or most of seven standard data collection methods…

There is a lack of instructional literature on how to conduct a feminist evaluation to highlight and transform systemic issues in gendered and intersecting power relations. Feminist Participatory Action Research (FPAR) enables a process for conducting community-driven, -led and -owned feminist evaluations that drive social justice actions. By…

The impostor phenomenon is a psychological construct referring to a range of negative emotions associated with a person's perception of their own "fraudulent competence" in a field or of their lack of skills necessary to be successful in that field. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many practicing evaluators have experienced impostor…