Calling all data geeks! There’s work afoot to propose a new TIG (Topical Interest Group) in the American Evaluation Association. We’re having a brief meeting at the AEA conference this year in San Antonio. Meet us at 6:05 on Friday November 12th in the Goliad Room for a short discussion…
An anonymous sweetheart sent me a copy of Don Moyer’s Napkin Sketch Workbook in the mail yesterday. I read it in one sitting. I’m not sure if it wasn’t meant for me to review, but seeing as how this is an unsanctioned blog, let’s do it anyway. The workbook’s…
It’s so easy to knock instances of bad graphic design in evaluation. They’re ubiquitous and, like many of you, I’m really good at it. So in the spirit of transparency (and curiosity) I dug up old flash drives to locate bad examples of graphic design and evaluation of my own. Nothing but…
Data visualization (or information visualization or infographics) isn’t just a sweet way to display your evaluation findings. It is a critical pathway to helping clients actually remember what you said. Blame the brain. Visual processing of information is the dominant method among all the senses – it is called the…
I had the awesome opportunity to host our local wine guru – Terry Stingley – at The Evaluation Center this week. He spoke to us about how to evaluate wine. We, of course, were thinking strictly about how to apply these notions to program evaluation. I learned so much about…
It had perhaps less than six words per slide. It had high quality graphics. It had a systematic and consistent placement of elements. But something about the presentation today still bugged the kernel of a graphic designer inside me. The presenter had clearly read some basic literature on slideshow presentations…
Evaluation use is a hot topic, but no one is looking at the role of graphic design. Guidance on graphic design of evaluation reports in the literature of our field is sparse. Typically, discussion of use of evaluation findings (or lack thereof) focuses on types of use (i.e., conceptual, process,…
Okay, people, I just endured another heartwrenching conversation about the state of slideshows in evaluation. We all get it, right? Death by Powerpoint is a common affliction. Point well taken. But if it is such common knowledge that our slideshows and our reports are an utter bore to endure, why…
or How Semantics Constrained a Field
Our discipline is stricken with too many values. I’m speaking semantically, of course. We use the word “values” to mean many things, including personal values, cultural and organizational values, criteria (or dimensions of merit), general and specific values (in terms of standards), monetary value (or worth), and in the action form as valuing (or judging). A conflation of terms hinders the discipline’s ability to be accessible others, particularly our clients and stakeholders, and unnecessarily confuses beginning evaluators, and perhaps even those who are more experienced.
Last year at about this time I was knee deep in survey redesign. I had joined this awesome project that has been conducting an annual survey for over 10 years. The surveyed parties are grantees in one of NSF’s program streams. Nice as they are, they’d been quite vocal about how the survey doesn’t meet their own evaluation needs, is difficult to complete, is too long, etc. I sort of empathized… until I had to complete the survey myself.