Date: Saturday, December 13, 2025
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hello AEA365, I am Art Hernandez, a longtime scholar and evaluator, strongly interested in the development and use of Culturally Responsive and Equitable Evaluation (CREE) and community member of Expanding the Bench (ETB).
As evaluators with experience in diverse contexts, we know that conflict is not an anomaly in our work, it is a constant undercurrent. Programs and policies are designed with intentions, but they meet communities with histories, identities, and lived realities. The friction between these forces often produces affect, emotions that signal alignment or misalignment and tension, the felt strain that motivates action. Understanding these dynamics is not optional; it is central to practicing evaluation responsibly.
Neuropsychological research shows that negative affect functions as an alarm, alerting us to incompatibility and the need for regulation. In evaluation, this translates into the emotional responses of stakeholders – frustration with exclusion, pride in cultural recognition, anxiety about power imbalances, anger at depersonalization and minoritization, aggravation regarding deaf interventions intending to “help”.
For evaluators, the challenge is epistemological: Do we treat affect as valid data? Traditional evaluation paradigms often privilege quantitative outcomes and minimize emotional responses. CREE pushes back, insisting that affect is not noise but evidence. Emotions reveal how programs are experienced, whether they foster belonging or perpetuate inequity. Ignoring affect risks silencing the very communities we claim to serve, and more.
Tension is the embodied form of affect in conflict. It is pressure that demands resolution. In practice, tension shows up when program goals clash with community priorities, or when evaluators’ frameworks collide with local epistemologies. Tension can derail if ignored but, tension is not inherently destructive; it is a motivator. It can drive dialogue, negotiation, and innovation when surfaced and addressed. It can clarify values, expose inequities, and motivate adaptation. The evaluator’s role is not to suppress tension but to engage it constructively to create conditions where tension is safe to express and productive in outcome. Managed well, tension becomes the energy that propels evaluation toward equity.
Evaluators sometimes face clashes between dominant Western and community-based epistemologies. Here, tension is inevitable. CREE requires us to treat these conflicts not as obstacles but as opportunities to expand our evaluative lens. This means being reflexive about our own assumptions, transparent about methodological choices, and open to co-constructing meaning with stakeholders.
Therefore, evaluators should: 1) Build evaluation frameworks that anticipate affective responses and make space for them as legitimate data; 2) Use tension as a diagnostic tool – where it arises, inequity often resides; 3) Recognize that tension is frequently rooted in historical inequities (addressing it requires shifting evaluative power toward communities); and 4) Remember that moderate tension can sharpen focus and drive innovation; excessive tension requires regulation strategies such as facilitated dialogue or participatory decision-making.
For seasoned evaluators, the takeaway is clear: affect and tension are not distractions from “real” evaluation. They are the very substance of culturally responsive and equitable practice. Affect signals where conflict lies; tension motivates us to act. Together, they remind us that evaluation is not just technical measurement but a relational, justice-oriented endeavor. By embracing affect and tension, we move beyond the illusion of neutrality and toward evaluation that is responsive, equitable, and transformative.
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.