Policy Watch: Celebrating Five Years of the Evidence Act

By: Katie O’Toole, Consultant for Evaluation Policy Task Force

January 2024 marked the fifth anniversary of the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (Evidence Act), which among many things, elevated program evaluation in statute and serves as the primary driver for formalizing evaluation in the U.S. federal government. The law requires federal agencies to designate evaluation officers, conduct capacity assessments, and develop learning agendas and annual evaluation plans.

Much progress has been made to bolster the capacity for program evaluation in federal agencies since the passage of the Evidence Act. Various events and publications released in January celebrated these implementation milestones.

Notably, the American Evaluation Association joined the Government Accountability Office, Washington Evaluators, and the Data Foundation to explore the impacts of the Evidence Act on the field of program evaluation over the past five years. The American Evaluation Association President, Felicia Bohanon, participated in a panel discussion with leading evaluators and contributors to evaluation policy to cover key wins, challenges, and emerging priorities to strengthen evaluation use in the federal government. The event emphasized how the Evidence Act provides a grounding framework for evaluation and has fostered a paradigm shift that prioritizes evidence-building – while also calling out needs related to funding, workforce, and dissemination of evidence to promote use, among other things.

Evidence Officials, including the federal evaluation officers and their fellow data and statistical officials, gathered for the anniversary as well. The celebratory convening provided an opportunity for the evidence community to reflect on their achievements, demonstrating the enthusiasm of the data and evidence community.

Further, the Evidence Team at the Office of Management and Budget marked the anniversary by highlighting several key evaluation-specific accomplishments, including launching Evaluation.gov as a central hub for evaluation efforts, developing an interactive Learning Agenda Questions Dashboard, and curating a Federal Evaluation Toolkit to provide resources that help agency staff at all levels better understand evaluation. The Evidence Team also launched an Evidence Project Portal – consolidating opportunities for outside researchers to contribute to examining agencies’ learning agenda questions and building useful evidence across the federal government.

Implementation of the Evidence Act has served as the foundation for integrating evaluation and evidence as a core government function. Reflecting on progress over the past five years and looking toward the future helps sustain the necessary momentum to address persisting complexities experienced in the evaluation community today and to realize the vision of the Evidence Act.

International News

The International and Cross-Cultural Evaluation (ICCE) TIG is excited to inform you about our new initiative to share up-to-date information about events and conferences organized by Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPE)! Please access this spreadsheet for your consideration to participate. The list will be updated periodically to keep you informed. 

The ICCE TIG continues to be committed to supporting AEA members to enhance opportunities to meet and collaborate with evaluators around the world.

Student Case Competition

AEA is hosting its second U.S. Student Evaluation Case Competition! This competition will take place on Saturday, April 13. Interested in participating? We are recruiting for both student teams and judges. Student teams consist of 3-5 students, with 1-2 coaches; teams will build an evaluation plan in response to a real-world case of a non-profit seeking an evaluation and submit it for judging. Judges will review the evaluation plans and provide feedback.  Prizes will be available for the winning team. Make sure you do not miss out on this amazing opportunity!

See more information on the competition and rules. Deadline to register as a team or judge is March 1. Learn more about student and judge eligibility on the AEA website.

Apply Today for the AEA Graduate Education Diversity Internship

AEA welcomes applications for its Graduate Education Diversity Internship (GEDI) Program, which provides paid internship and training opportunities during the academic year. The GEDI program works to engage and support students from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field of evaluation. Visit the AEA website to learn more about program components, eligibility criteria, and application process. All materials must be received by AEA staff by Friday, March 8.

Proposals for Evaluation 2024

Submit a proposal for AEA's Evaluation 2024 conference taking place October 21-26, 2024, in Portland, Oregon! As in past years, the Evaluation 2024 program will be selected by our TIG leaders. We are not implementing any changes in the collection or review of conference abstracts for Evaluation 2024. Proposals are due March 22.

New this year: To improve the attendee experience and better organize sessions, the Evaluation 2024 schedule will be organized by streams. TIG leaders will have final decision on abstract placement within streams, to ensure topics align. These streams are listed here.

Learn more

2023 AEA Awards Recipients

In 2023, AEA reintroduced our awards program and presented these distinguished honors at Evaluation 2023. For the next few issues of the newsletter, AEA will spotlight the recipients of last year’s awards. This month we spotlight the Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator awardees, Dana Linnell and Emily Gates!

Emily F. Gates is an assistant professor of evaluation at Boston College. Her research examines systems thinking, values, and equity in evaluation. Recent work includes co-authoring Evaluating and Valuing in Social Research (with Thomas Schwandt, Guilford Press); co-editing a special issue of New Directions for Evaluation on systems- and complexity-informed evaluation; and leading a mixed methods study on equity in evaluation practice. She teaches graduate courses in evaluation practice and methods, evaluation theory and research, mixed methods inquiry, and theory of change. Prior to academia, she was an evaluation fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology with a concentration in evaluation from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dana Linnell, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in Evaluation at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, teaching courses in evaluation, research methods, statistics, and more. She is an associate editor for the Methods Note section at the American Journal of Evaluation (AJE) and is involved in many working groups and TIGs with the American Evaluation Association, including most recently starting the AEA Student Evaluation Case Competition. She conducts research on evaluation, investigating topics related to the general profession of evaluation like what is evaluation, who are evaluators, and promoting the field of evaluation. 

Visit the AEA website to learn more about these exemplars in our field. Learn more.

AEA will be accepting nomination letters of interest for the 2024 awards in early March. You can learn more about the nomination process on our website.

Welcome New AEA Volunteers

Thank you to everyone who raised their hand to volunteer with AEA. Our TIG and working group volunteers lend their time, expertise, and innovative ideas to ensure AEA can provide networking and education resources to our community. Please join us in welcoming our 2024 TIG volunteers and working group members.

2024 TIG Leadership

Local Arrangements Working Group: Chari Smith
Nominations & Elections Working Group: Monique Liston, Natasha Monteith, and Taiwo Adesoba
Awards Working Group: Tatiana Bustos, Kathi Trawver, and Corey Newhouse

To learn more about AEA’s volunteer members or to volunteer for future opportunities, click the link below. AEA accepts volunteer applications throughout the year and as opportunities become available.

See our full list of 2024 volunteers.   

Journal Spotlight 

New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) Junior Editor Program

This year, New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) launched the Junior Editor program. This program provides Junior Editors with an opportunity to be a part of the NDE editorial team, to develop their writing and editing skills, to collaborate and build community with leaders in evaluation, and to help shape new knowledge in the field. NDE received 22 applications from doctoral students enrolled across 19 universities. From this, four were selected to be a part of the inaugural cohort. Please join us in congratulating and welcoming them to NDE!

Valerie Marshall (she/her)
Western Michigan University

A first-generation student with 15 years of experience in research and evaluation, Val currently works as a Senior Research Associate at The Evaluation Center at WMU and is excited to serve as a Junior Editor. As a Junior Editor, she hopes to learn more about NDE’s editorial processes and build upon its efforts to make publishing more inclusive and diverse.

Naomi Stephen (she/her)
University of California, Los Angeles

Naomi Stephen is a doctoral student, studying social research methodology with an emphasis on evaluation theory and practice through qualitative methods. In this position, Naomi hopes to learn more about journal creation processes and to continue expanding the reach of NDE to evaluation practitioners beyond the academic community and support growth within the field of evaluation.

Amanda Sutter (she/her)
University of Connecticut

With 15 years experience as an evaluator, Amanda Sutter is now a doctoral student whose research on evaluation interests center on methodology, evaluation practice, and the intersection of evaluation and measurement. As a Junior Editor, Amanda hopes to support NDE with increasing access and equity, promoting practitioner engagement, and encouraging new voices to contribute to an NDE that best represents all evaluators.

Meg Johnson (any pronouns)
University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Meg Johnson is a doctoral candidate in the Research & Evaluation in Education program, and their interests include evaluation theory, evaluator competencies, and arts-based methods in evaluation. As a Junior Editor, they plan to attract new audiences of practitioners, scholars, and students to NDE’s scholarship in meaningful ways, especially on and through social media.

New Directions for Evaluation (NDE): Submit Proposal for Special Issue

Submit a proposal to an upcoming special issue of New Directions for Evaluation  on Moving Research on Evaluation Forward. We are seeking article proposals that broadly demonstrate and discuss RoE. We extend a special invitation for proposals from multiple authors; young, emerging, and early career evaluators and researchers, Indigenous evaluators, and those who are from underrepresented groups.

Interested authors should submit a proposal to the guest editors by Sunday, March 31. We highly recommend interested authors reach out ahead of time with a brief abstract to determine whether your idea may be a good fit for the proposed issue. Please read the full call for proposals for more information, including contact information.

AEA Publishing Corner

Share your accomplishments with AEA! We are excited to introduce the AEA Publishing Corner, which will spotlight work published by our members. If you have a recent publication or professional accomplishment you would like to share, please submit it here.

Congratulations to AEA member Emma Duer on the publication of her most recent article, Developing a Tool for Monitoring and Evaluating a Network Approach to Innovation: Lessons from Year 1 of the SexEdVA Disability-Inclusive Sexual Health Network (DSHN), published through Prevention Science. 

David Fetterman received the Global Impact Award.  It was announced in Times Square on the NASDAQ billboard.  It was made for his new book Empowerment Evaluation and Social Justice: Confronting the Culture of Silence (2023). It highlights his work using a USAID-sponsored empowerment evaluation to help eliminate tuberculosis in India and a Feeding America-funded empowerment evaluation designed to fight for food justice in the US. We congratulate Professor Fetterman. He is pictured with his family by his side.