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Session Title: Evaluation Within Contested Spaces
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Panel Session 536 to be held in CROCKETT C on Friday, Nov 12, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the International and Cross-cultural Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Ross VeLure Roholt, University of Minnesota, rossvr@umn.edu
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| 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 it is not easily available, as is 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. Also, research on evaluation practice under these conditions will be covered. A relevant bibliography will be distributed.
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Doing Evaluation and Being an Evaluator in Violently Contested Spaces
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| Michael Baizerman, University of Minnesota, mbaizerm@umn.edu
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Michael Baizerman has over 35 years of local, national, and international evaluation experience. 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 this work. He joins his experiences of doing evaluation in contested spaces to literature in evaluation, anthropology and other social sciences, and also in humanitarian and peace building providing an overview of doing evaluation and being an evaluator in violently contested spaces. Themes are located, positioned and named, and then put into conversation with evaluation theory and practice in non-contested spaces.
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Crafting High Quality Evaluations in Contested Spaces: Lessons From the Field.
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| Barry Cohen, Rainbow Research Inc, bcohen@rainbowresearch.org
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Barry Cohen has been Executive Director of Rainbow Research, Inc. since 1998. He has 35 years of experience in research, evaluation, planning and training in fields such as public health and eliminating health disparities; alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; violence prevention; after-school enrichment; school desegregation; systems advocacy, mentoring, social services, and welfare reform. His case study of evaluating programs in a contested space in the United States provides insights into how evaluation is shaped by local conditions and what evaluators must do to craft high quality evaluations studies under these conditions.
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Show me your Impact: Evaluating Transitional Justice in Contested Spaces
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| Colleen Duggan, International Development Research Centre, cduggan@idrc.ca
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This paper discusses some of the most significant challenges and opportunities for evaluating the effects of programs in support of transitional justice – the field that addresses how post-conflict or post authoritarian societies deal with legacies of wide spread human rights violations. The discussion is empirically grounded in a case study that assesses the efforts of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and one of its Guatemalan partners to evaluate the effects of a museum exposition that is attempting to recast historic memory and challenge racist attitudes in post-conflict Guatemala. The paper argues that despite the increasing trend to fund transitional justice programs, many international aid donors are stuck in traditional and arguably orthodox paradigms of program evaluation. The case study experience indicates that there is no perfect evaluation model or approach for evaluating transitional justice programming – only choices to be made by evaluators and evaluands.
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Being Practical, Being Safe: Doing Evaluations in Contested Spaces
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| Ross VeLure Roholt, University of Minnesota, rossvr@umn.edu
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Ross VeLure Roholt worked and lived in Belfast, Northern Ireland and in Ramallah and Gaza . During this time, he designed and worked on several evaluation studies for youth programs, youth services, museum exhibitions, and quality assurance in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Ramallah and Gaza, Palestine. His evaluation experience under violence and post-violence conditions will be described and joined to other evaluation studies under similar conditions gathered from practitioners and researchers for a completed special full issue of Evaluation and Program Planning, co-edited by Ross VeLure Roholt and Michael Baizerman. Its focus is describing the challenges and strategies for evaluation work under these conditions, using case studies and analytic essays. In particular he discusses how contested spaces raises questions about the evaluation enterprise.
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