Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest.

Have something you’d like to see here? Tweet us @EvalAcademy!

New and Noteworthy — Reads

A Social Equity Assessment Tool

Khalil Bitar (@KhalilBitar) recently published a paper on ResearchGate titled “A Social Equity Assessment Tool (SEAT) for Evaluation.” The paper discusses how there is a lack of tools for equity assessment in evaluation. Bitar proposes a tool with 13 social equity aspects that evaluators can use to examine equity and social justice issues in various contexts. The SEAT consists of eight demographic aspects and five cross-cutting aspects. This is a comprehensive tool to assess equity more inclusively in your practice – give it a try!

Adapting Evaluation Questions to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The UNFPA Evaluation Office recently released “Adapting Evaluation Questions to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The increasingly complex and dynamic context of the pandemic has meant the UNFPA programmes are being reassessed and redesigned to respond to the emerging needs. Given this, there is a need to adapt evaluation questions to assess the extent to which UNFPA has adapted its interventions. UNFPA developed this document to encourage evaluators to reflect on their existing questions and to formulate meaningful questions that take into account COVID-19 factors. Questions centre around: a) relevance, b) effectiveness, c) efficiency, d) coordination and coherence, e) sustainability.

Reflections – Lessons from Evaluations: Learning from Past Crises for Recovering from COVID-19

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has a reflections series, which are lessons learned from past UNDP evaluations. This first volume is a compendium of the various reflection papers. The 61 lessons presented in this first volume can inform how to design and implement responses to the COVID-19 crisis based on what has worked well in previous crises.

Measuring Our Impact: Evaluation Framework for Measuring the Impact of Community Development Work Across Local Government in Western Australia

The Community Development Network of Local Government Professionals of Western Australia worked in partnership with a number of partners to create a Community Development Evaluation Framework and Toolkit. Community practitioners are the intended target audience. The purpose of the resource is to strengthen community practitioners’ understanding of evaluation and to provide them with practical steps to implement evaluation in their practice. The resource is basic evaluation content but is very comprehensive and contains a number of toolkits and templates.

New and Noteworthy — Events

Virtual Workshops

Transformation Narratives: Storytelling in the Service of Evaluation and Organizational Learning Through a Gender Lens 

Organized by: Institute of Social Studies Trust 

Date: March 23, 2021; 6 pm Indian Standard Time 

Facilitator: Hamutal Gouri 

Evaluation for Transformative Change 

Organized by: Tamarack Institute  

Dates: April 20, 22, 27, and 29, 2021 

Facilitators: Michael Quinn Patton and Mark Cabaj 

Webinars

Evaluation Speaker Series 

Organized by: Virginia Tech 

Presenter: Sheila Robinson – Designing Quality Survey Questions 

Dates: March 25, 2021; 1 – 2 pm 

Presenter: Candice Morkel – Decolonizing ‘Development’ Evaluation 

Dates: April 15, 2021; noon – 1 pm 

Courses

Most Significant Change

Instructor: Clear Horizon Academy 

Start Date: April 16, 2021 

Evaluation Systems Change and Place-Based Approaches 

Instructor: Clear Horizon Academy 

Start Date: May 21, 2021