Educational Evaluation TIG Week: A Second Set of Eyes: Using AI to Cross-Check Evaluation Scopes and Budgets by Elizabeth Autio

Date: Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Hi, I’m Elizabeth Autio, an evaluator specializing in education and youth-serving programs.

When I start a new project, one of my first steps is to set up a spreadsheet where I line up the project scope with tasks, estimate the hours each will require, and ultimately develop an overall evaluation budget. Truthfully, this is a process I love. There is something about laying out each line and planning the work associated with it that I find deeply satisfying.

The math is the easy part. The challenge is anticipating all the work—visible and invisible—that goes into delivering the evaluation. We all know a focus group isn’t just the hour spent facilitating it; it’s also the protocol development, recruitment, scheduling, reminders, transcription, and analysis.

And then there is the work you can’t fully anticipate. Things can go sideways. We all have stories of an evaluation with unexpected delays, roadblocks, and time-sucks. A good budget needs some room to account for these possibilities, too.

Budgeting is even more fun when I can do it with someone else – a colleague who can look over my scope and tell me what I’ve missed. As an independent evaluator, I don’t always have someone sitting in the next office. AI doesn’t replace that colleague, but I’ve found it can ask some useful questions.

Whether you are an independent evaluator, new evaluator, or even an old hand at the budgeting process, AI can provide a useful second set of eyes—especially for identifying hidden labor, mismatches between scope and budget, and assumptions you have not made explicit.

In the spirit of learning together, here are some of my tips.

1. Give AI the scope, not just the budget. Provide your scope of work alongside your detailed estimate of tasks and hours, and ask AI to assess the alignment between them. What activities or labor appear necessary to deliver the scope but aren’t captured in your hours? This might sound like common sense, but I find this much more useful than simply asking, “Does this budget look reasonable?”
2. Ask it to challenge your assumptions. I especially like asking it to identify assumptions I’ve made implicitly—about client responsibilities, data quality, response rates, or turnaround times. For example: Where might I be underestimating my time? Where could scope creep occur? Which estimates seem high or low relative to the work involved?
3. Use it for scenarios. What happens if the client wants another round of revisions? If recruitment takes twice as long? If the data arrive messy? If the data sharing agreement takes months to be countersigned?
4. Look for imbalances. Ask AI to compare the level of effort across your scope. Are you spending 40 hours collecting data and only six analyzing it? Have you budgeted substantial time for a simple deliverable but not enough for a complex one? Looking across the whole budget can unearth inconsistencies that you might have missed.

Lesson Learned

AI needs your professional judgment to be useful. It doesn’t know your client, how long you take to analyze 20 interviews, or what level of quality you are promising. If it suggests cuts or additional work, I still have to decide whether they make sense and add value.

Using AI does not mean you turn over the budgeting process entirely. But you can definitely use it as a tool to cross-check and stress-test your own estimate.

I still miss sitting down in a conference room with a colleague and hearing them ask, “Are you sure you’ve given yourself enough time for that?” AI isn’t a human. And it’s not magical. But it can be an interesting sounding board, asking questions or generating ideas for your consideration.

How do you stress-test your evaluation scopes and budgets? Have you tried asking AI to challenge your assumptions or cross-check your work? Share your experiences below!

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