Abstract
This issue of volume 45 is the second issue of our co-editorship, and we are excited about this issue. As you will see, this issue continues to feature articles accepted under previous editorships as designated by the symbols (^*†), which reflect the journal editorial leadership of Sharon Rallis, George Julnes, and Jori Hall/Laura Peck, respectively.
As you leaf through the pages, you will see some common threads across the featured articles that provide ways to think evaluation theory, methods, and practice, including ways that our profession and discipline are evolving. Most importantly, the contributions provide ideas for how to incorporate and reflect on competencies, training, and the implications of our practice in policy context. The issue includes four research articles, a Method Note, an editorial note and three articles in the Teaching and Learning of Evaluation Section, and a Book Review.
The first of the articles—In The Garden of Evaluation Approaches by Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead, Daniela Schröter, and Lyssa Becho—is ambitious in rethinking the field's classifications of evaluation approaches. It aims to provide theoretical clarity and inform practice. The authors illustrate the utility of using seven approaches (fourth generation, made in Africa, nation-to-nation, practical participatory, theory-driven, transformative participatory, and sistematicación de experienceas) as an organizing structure. By leveraging prior scholarship on classifications, the authors illustrate how the seven approaches (or flowers, as they refer to them) have unique and layered philosophical orientations, methodological dispositions, and key dimensions to distinguish them. The authors’ multi-dimensional mapping of evaluation garden of international evaluation approaches is in itself a contribution and offers opportunities to extend beyond United States and European dominated contexts. The article offers an alternative way of thinking and advancing evaluation education and training efforts.
Next, John Lavelle, Natalie Jones, and Scott Donaldson's article, titled Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Exploring the Imposter Phenomenon in Evaluation, is a welcome addition to a growing interest in academic and public scholarship on the topic of “feeling like a fraud” and the “imposter syndrome.” Clinical psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes introduced the “imposter” though their work's observations about successful, mostly white women in individual psychotherapy, groups, and college classes who reported feeling like impostors. Understanding the impact of the phenomenon on people across countries, ages, gender, education levels, ethnicities and nearly 50 years later, Lavelle, Jones and Donaldson study people who professionally identify as evaluators. They ask three main questions to gain a understanding of the imposter phenomenon in evaluators and of evaluators’ coping tools. They show that feelings of imposterism among evaluators are episodic, and coping involves building mentorship and communities of practice in the evaluation field.
The third article pairs well by exploring another undesirable personal experience: that of anxiety. The Prevalence of Evaluator Anxiety in Practice: An Empirical Examination, by Jessica Renger and Stewart Donaldson builds off the sole study in the field by another leading evaluator, Robert Picciotto. Anxiety can arise across stages of the evaluation process, including as a function of age, experience, and values and competencies held. Based on an analysis of data from a random sample of American Evaluation Association members, the results show that evaluator anxiety is common in evaluation practice (not surprisingly with implications around anxiety caused by imposter syndrome too). Considering the onset and continuation of the COVID-19 global pandemic and related challenges—especially for politically or culturally context-sensitive evaluations across the globe—there is even more reason to consider the implications of evaluator anxiety for the next generations of evaluation scholars and practitioners.
The fourth main article in this issue is Evaluating the Policy–Practice Gap in a Transitional Housing Program: An Innovation in Process Evaluation, by Jessica Lauren Perez and Anaid Yerena. Published in Online First in 2016 and making it into a print issue just now, we contend that it remains relevant in its contribution to modeling how we evaluate human services programs and policies. In particular, the authors present an innovative (both then and now), low-cost evaluation tool: The Gap Assessment of Policy and Practice (GAPP) aims to diagnose and facilitate a road map for service delivery providers engaged in process evaluations that involve collaboration in data collection. Using five domain theory, Perez and Yerena apply the GAPP in an internationally recognized program dedicated to providing services to the homeless, present a comparison of results between traditional process evaluation and the GAPP tool evaluation, and apply lessons learned. As is often the case where processes and practices matter alongside outcomes, perhaps it is no surprise that the process of reviewing program practices and policies through the use of the GAPP tool has benefits: it highlights value of continual feedback, of mission focus and alignment, of practitioners’ skill development, and of the potential to reduce gaps between policy and practice.
The Method Note included in this issue complements nicely the “Garden” and CAPP articles. In Rich in Pictures: A Visual Method for Sensemaking Amid Complexity, Emily Gates describes a method that weaves together evaluation theory, methods, and practice. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then “rich pictures” can serve as foundation for complexity and sensemaking. Using illustrations from her work and visual diagramming techniques, Gates provides guidance on how to facilitate a rich picturing process within a multi-institutional network of science, technology, science, and mathematics faculty to co-create teaching and learning improvement. The note focuses on examining implementation processes, identifying emergent consequences, and incorporating practitioner and community tacit knowledge, with obvious implications for evaluation practice.
Next is the Teaching and Learning of Evaluation Section, in which Section Editors Daniela Schröter and Rebecca Woodland introduce themselves, their vision for the section, and the articles included. We refer readers to their editorial note for commentary, and we express here our gratitude for their leadership in curating the section to the benefit of AJE's readers and the field.
Finally, to close out this issue, we offer a Book Review. Rebecca Davis reviews
In closing, we note that, as with any AJE issue, it is our hope that all subscribers and readers will find something in these pages of relevance to their work, leaving them eager to check mailboxes, whether physical or virtual, for the next issue.
