|
Session Title: Evaluation under Violent and Post-Violent Conditions: Describing and Clarifying the Work and Suggesting Strategies, Tactics, and Tools
|
|
Panel Session 582 to be held in Room 108 in the Convention Center on Friday, Nov 7, 10:55 AM to 11:40 AM
|
|
Sponsored by the International and Cross-cultural Evaluation TIG
|
| Chair(s): |
| Michael Baizerman,
University of Minnesota,
mbaizerm@umn.edu
|
| Abstract:
International and humanitarian and other aid agencies require evaluation for accountability and program improvement. Increasingly, evaluation has to be undertaken in communities under conditions of violent division. There is practice wisdom about how to conceptualize and implement this work, but not as easily available public, professional literature as there is about social research under such conditions.
This panel will offer a public, professional space for describing, clarifying and understanding this work, suggesting practical strategies, tactics and tools. Research topics on evaluation under these conditions will be covered. A bibliography of work on these will be distributed.
|
|
Conducting Evaluation in Contested Spaces: Describing and Understanding Evaluation Under These Conditions
|
| Ross VeLure Roholt,
University of Minnesota,
rossvr@umn.edu
|
|
Ross VeLure Roholt worked and lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland for two years (2004-2006). During this time, he designed and worked on several evaluation studies for youth programs, youth services, museum exhibitions, and quality assurance. His evaluation experience under violence and post-violence conditions will be described and joined with other evaluation studies under similar conditions that have been gathered from practitioners and researchers for a special edition in the Journal of Evaluation and Program Planning, edited by Ross VeLure Roholt and Michael Baizerman. The focus will be on describing and clarifying evaluation work under these conditions.
|
|
|
Interrogating Evaluation Practice from the Perspective of Contested Spaces
|
| Michael Baizerman,
University of Minnesota,
mbaizerm@umn.edu
|
|
Michael Baizerman has over 35 years of evaluation experience around the globe. Over the last seven years he has worked with governmental and non-governmental organizations in Northern Ireland, South Africa, Israel, Palestine, and the Balkan region to document and describe youth work in contested spaces and to develop effective evaluation strategies to document, describe, and determine outcomes of the work. Responding to and expanding on the description provided earlier, evaluation practice as typically described in the North and West will be interrogated. It will be shown that the very nature of such spaces makes difficult to impossible typical best practices.
We use this finding to suggest practical strategies, tactics, and tools for designing and conducting evaluation under violent and post-violent contexts.
| |