Using Competency-Informed Tasks to Guide Evaluation Capacity Strengthening

Abstract

Background: EvaluATE, a federally funded evaluation hub, offers an array of resources and activities to strengthen evaluation capacity. However, there were some gaps across the full range of tasks that evaluators and evaluation users need to know how to do. The team created a framework based on evaluation tasks to guide their future evaluation capacity-strengthening work, with the aim of offering resources for all essential evaluation tasks. Purpose: The article explains the need for a context-specific, task-based evaluation capacity strengthening framework, the framework’s relationship to the American Evaluation Association’s Evaluator Competencies, how the framework is being used, and lessons learned. Setting: The Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation Intervention: EvaluATE, the evaluation hub for the ATE program. Research Design: Not applicable. Data Collection and Analysis: The evaluation task framework was validated through a task-tracking study, Delphi study, and expert review. Insights for this article are based on the authors’ experience. Findings: The main lessons learned for developing task-based frameworks to guide evaluation capacity strengthening include: (1) Be clear about the scope and purpose of the task list (for both internal and external audiences). (2) In addition to stating what must be done for a given task, say why. (3) Verify the appropriateness of the tasks with typical practitioners and experts within the programmatic context.

Keywords

• evaluation capacity building
• evaluation capacity strengthening
• evaluation capacity development
• evaluator competencies
• evaluation tasks
• JMDE