Blogs

2017 International Realist Conference

sparks-superuser's picture 23rd August 2017 by sparks-superuser

We've got our head in realism this week, partly because early-bird registrations for the 2017 International Realist Conference close soon (Early-bird registration deadline has been extended until Thursday, September), and partly because we've been shown Chris Lysy's realist cartoon series (commissioned by the Rameses project) which made us giggle. You can view the full series of cartoons on the Rameses website, along with a number of other great resources about realist evaluation, including Ray Pawson's video series.

BetterEvaluation is going to AES17 - Come say hello !

sparks-superuser's picture 15th August 2017 by sparks-superuser

We're thrilled to be able to join the Australasian Evaluation Society at their 2017 International Conference in Canberra. We'll have a booth set up in the conference exhibition area and we'd love you to come say hello and join in the fun as we use our time at the AES to work with our members, website users, and the wider evaluation community to co-create and share knowledge about evaluation.

Lessons from a trial of the Success Case Method

Liz McGuinness's picture 28th July 2017 by Liz McGuinness

The Success Case Method approach is useful for documenting stories of impact and for understanding the factors that help or hinder impact. It is particularly useful for uncovering the contextual forces that influence impact. Originally designed for evaluating corporate training programs, the Success Case Method is now being applied to other programs including international development interventions.

Launch of EvalPartners 2017 Innovation Challenges

sparks-superuser's picture 22nd June 2017 by sparks-superuser

As one of the EvalPartners, we'd like to share this EvalPartners announcement about the launch of the 2017 round of "Innovation Challenges". EvalPartners is a global partnership to strengthen national evaluation capacities. In November 2015, it launched the first ever long-term global vision for evaluation, developed during EvalYear 2015 through a participatory process with the global evaluation community.

BetterEvaluation FAQ: How do you use program theory for evaluating systems?

Patricia Rogers's picture 21st June 2017 by Patricia Rogers

In our recent blog post about using theories of change and logic models better in evaluation, we asked BetterEvaluation members to submit a question or challenge that they have in relation to creating or using theory of change for review by the BetterEvaluation team.

BE FAQ: How do I prepare and distribute Request for Proposal and Terms of Reference documents?

Alice Macfarlan's picture 1st June 2017 by Alice Macfarlan

We often get email enquiries asking for advice in preparing the documents used to invite evaluators to prepare proposals to do an evaluation.  These documents have a variety of labels including Request for Proposal (RFP), Terms of Reference (TOR), and Scope of Work (SOW). The advice below focuses on two important aspects in this: writing a good RFP/TOR, and sharing it in ways that will create the best pool of proposals.

Using logic models and theories of change better in evaluation

Patricia Rogers's picture 19th May 2017 by Patricia Rogers

Many evaluations include a process of developing logic models and theories of change – an explanation of how the activities of a program, project, policy, network or event are expected to contribute to particular results in the short-term and longer-term.  They have been used for many years -  versions can be seen in Carol Weiss’ 1972 book "Evaluation research: methods for assessing program effectiveness" -  and they have been mainstreamed in many organisations

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