
Articles
Explore our latest articles, developed by our team of evaluators and special guests, grounded in real-world experience to support your evaluation practice—whether you're a beginner or an expert.
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New Template: Interview Tracking Log
Eval Academy just released a new template, “Interview Tracking Log.” This template is available as a Word document as well as an Excel file! This Interview Tracking Log can be used by anyone who will be completing interviews to collect qualitative data.
Chart Templates: The Time Saver You Should Be Using
Chart templates will alleviate the pains of trying to reformat every new chart from scratch. From adjusting text size and font to formatting bar width and colour, a template will save you a significant amount of time in drafting your next evaluation report.
Implementation Science: The Best Thing You’ve Never Heard Of As An Evaluator
Being knowledgeable about Implementation Science can only make our evaluation work stronger.
Five Elements To Include In Your Reporting Style Guide
A style guide is a time-saving tool that helps you be consistent in your formatting when creating client and public-facing products, from evaluation plans to reports and presentations. When working with a team, style guides ensure that team members are working efficiently as they create evaluation products.
A Starter Pack Of Presentation Tools
Are you looking to elevate your presentation game? In this article, we list some awesome presentation tools along with ideas for how to use them in your evaluation practice.
Sampling Bias: Identifying And Avoiding Bias In Data Collection
Bias in evaluation is inevitable. Reflection helps us to identify our bias and when we do, it is necessary to identify sources of bias in our processes, eliminate which bias we can, and acknowledge which bias we cannot.
Developing A Logic Model - Check Out Our Templates!
Eval Academy has just released a new free template to help you Develop a Logic Model.
How Evaluation Has Changed The World
Whether it’s by building capacity through the evaluation process or by developing realistic, actionable recommendations, evaluation plays an important part in making a difference on both a small and a grand scale!
Incentives For Participation In Evaluation
In this article, we discuss different incentives for participation, explore the biases that offering an incentive can introduce, and guide you in deciding whether to offer an incentive, including what form and value that incentive should be.
How Do I Use The Kirkpatrick Model In Evaluation?
Kirkpatrick is probably one of those names/methods you’ve heard about in your evaluation career, but have you ever used it? In this article, we explain how to use the Kirkpatrick model in your evaluation planning, implementation, and reporting.
How To Develop A Theory Of Change For Evaluation
In this follow-up article, we will walk you through a step-by-step process of how you can develop your own ToC diagram for evaluation purposes.
Differences Between Theory Of Change, Log Frames, Results Frameworks And Logic Models – What Are They And When To Use Them
You might have noticed how there seem to be quite a few evaluation tools doing very similar things. It’s no surprise that these tools can sometimes be confused, and the lines can be blurred around when and how to use them. To help you on your way to deciding which tool is best suited to your evaluation, we’ve selected a few of our favourites to compare and contrast.
What’s The Difference Between Goal And Objective? The Most Confusing Evaluation Jargon
The evaluation world is full of jargon! In this article, we list our back-pocket definitions for some of the most confusing evaluation language.
3 Easy Ways To Quantify Your Qualitative Data
You’ve completed your qualitative data collection and you’re writing up your report. You step back and look at All. The. Text. If only you had some quantitative data to include in a chart, or some numbers to report! In this article, we talk about 3 ways you can quantify your qualitative data.
Criteria Based Ranking In Developmental Evaluation
Criteria Based Ranking is one tool evaluators can use to facilitate critical thinking and some level of precision in decision making. In this article, we explain what criteria-based ranking is and how we used it in developmental evaluation.
The “Mixing” In Mixed Methods
Data integration is a way of merging these data from different sources through mixed methods. In this article, we discuss how qualitative and quantitative data can be integrated at the study design level, methods, or analysis level.
Finding The Right Sample Size (The Hard Way)
For those interested in calculating sample sizes by hand, or getting a better understanding of the math behind many sample size calculators, we outline the formulae used to calculate sample sizes.
Finding The Right Sample Size (The Easy Way)
In this article, we briefly define sample sizes, their importance, and how to calculate them (or how to use a tool to calculate them).
How To Use Calendly To Schedule Interviews Like A Pro
In the evaluation world, scheduling can be a nightmare. This article describes how to use Calendly to schedule interviews in three simple steps.
The Importance Of Articulating Assumptions
In this article, we describe what assumptions are in evaluation, explain why you should document assumptions, and describe how to reflect on your assumptions when collecting and analyzing evaluation results. We also provide some practical examples of how to include assumptions in your own evaluations!