Date: Thursday, July 24, 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.
I am Melissa K. Demetrikopoulos, Past-Chair of STEM Education and Training TIG and Director of Scientific Communications at the Institute for Biomedical Philosophy. Our Institute is very interested in evaluation and research processes specifically within an ethical framework that supports the development of a thriving community of practice.
Lessons Learned: Need for Inter-Evaluator Code of Conduct:
In speaking with other evaluation groups and searching the AEA site, we were surprised to learn there is not a clearly articulated Inter-Evaluator Code of Conduct. Development of a code would align with AEA’s mission including “…improve evaluation practices…” and “…promote evaluation as a profession…”; as well as AEA’s values including “We value…an understanding of evaluation practices” and “…continual development of evaluation professionals…” (https://www.eval.org/About/About-AEA). While inter-evaluator interactions are not explicitly addressed in the Guiding Principles (https://www.eval.org/About/Guiding-Principles), a number of important Principles could be expanded including Integrity, Respect for People, and Common Good. Evaluators often interact as a community of practice through chats, discussions, webinars, and conferences, and it is important for the community to have shared and trusted processes and forms of engagement in order to thrive. Such a code could address how we manage information we encounter about each other’s practices, ethical issues related to behaviors that may be perceived as predatory of another evaluator’s work, and general professional practices when interacting as a community.
Hot Tips: What could Inter-Evaluator Code of Conduct encompass?
A. Integrity: Evaluators behave with honesty and transparency in interactions with other evaluators.
A.1. Communicate truthfully, including communicating when it is not possible or ethical to share information.
A.2. When an evaluator obtains information about another evaluator or their practices due to interactions with funders or similar entities, or by serving as a reviewer or contractor, or due to their role within AEA or TIG leadership, they will treat such information as confidential and neither share this information nor use it to their advantage.
A.3. Evaluators will give proper credit through citations and other means.
A.4. Evaluators will not attempt to disrupt relationships of other evaluators with their clients or collaborators including attempts to obtain contracts for work promised or in progress by other evaluators.
B. Respect for People: Evaluators honor the dignity, well-being, and self-worth of other evaluators and acknowledge the influence of culture within and across groups.
B.1. Encourage communicative generosity, whereby communication is enhanced by having awareness or understanding of language use across generations, regions, or groups. Understanding that an individual’s usage of language is shaped from their experience will facilitate an understanding concerning their intentions and encourage communication across generations, regions, and groups without fear of censure or retaliation. Communicative generosity is not an avenue to allow or encourage hateful or discriminatory language.
B.2. Encourage intellectual freedom and diversity of thought. When perspectives conflict, it is the obligation of all community members to respectfully listen to other perspectives.
C. Common Good: Evaluators strive to contribute to common good and advancement of an ethical association.
C.1. Promote transparent and active sharing of instruments and tools within evaluation community that benefit best evaluation practices and discourage use of instruments/tools that negatively impact integrity of evaluation or contribute to discriminatory practices.
C.2. When an evaluator obtains information about evaluation opportunities due to their role within AEA or TIG leadership, they should broadly disseminate this information through appropriate forms of communication so other evaluators are informed of opportunities in a timely fashion.
Elevate our community! Take the next step to embrace community values and not just assume someone else will take this on. Share this draft Code and work towards having one developed with broad community participation.
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.