AES

AES 2018 conference reflections: power, values, and food

Francesca_Demetriou's picture 14th October 2018 by Francesca_Demetriou

In this guest blog, Fran Demetriou (Lirata Consulting and volunteer M&E advisor for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s Mentoring Program​) shares her reflections from the recent Australasian Evaluation Society (AES)'s 2018 conference, held in Launceston - in particular, what are some of the lessons a young and emerging evaluator might take away from the event?

Pathways to professionalisation - Part 1: Professionalisation within the context of the AES

Patricia Rogers and Greet Peersman's picture 25th July 2018 by Patricia Rogers and Greet Peersman

In part 1 of this two-part blog series, Greet Peersman and Patricia Rogers introduce the ‘Pathways to advance professionalisation within the context of the AES’ project and report. They explore the four pathways identified in the report: 1) Ad hoc, disconnected activities; 2) Focused, connected and strategic activities; 3) Voluntary credentialing of evaluators; and 4) Regulated and licensed profession, and discuss their recommendation that the Australasian Evaluation Society follow a pathway of focused, connected and strategic activities, with a view to considering a voluntary credentialing process down the track.

Pathways to professionalisation - Part 2: Options for professionalisation

Patricia Rogers and Greet Peersman's picture 20th July 2018 by Patricia Rogers and Greet Peersman

In the previous blog in this series, Greet Peersman and Patricia Rogers introduced the ‘Pathways to advance professionalisation within the context of the AES’ project and report. A major feature of this report is the exploration of 41 activities and approaches that can be used to advance the professionalisation of monitoring and evaluation, and the conclusion of this two-part series looks at these approaches in more detail. We believe these activities are likely to be of considerable interest to others who are undertaking or planning evaluation capacity strengthening activities and we encourage you to share your feedback and thoughts on these activities at the end of this blog.

I'm doing an impact evaluation: What evidence do I need? (#AES17 presentation slides)

Are quantitative or qualitative methods better for undertaking impact evaluations? What about true experiments? Is contribution analysis the new 'state of the art' in impact evaluation or should I just do a survey and use statistical methods to create comparison groups?

Determining one's plan for an impact evaluation occurs within the constraints of a specific context. Since method choices must always be context specific, debates in the professional literature about impact methods can at best only provide partial guidance to evaluation practitioners. The way to break out of this methods impasse is by focusing on the evidentiary requirements for assessing casual impacts.