Research on Evaluation (RoE) TIG Week: Building a “RoE Boat” Outside of University Settings by Rachael Kenney and Tatiana E. Bustos

Date: Sunday, June 28, 2026

Hello! We are Rachael Kenney and Tatiana Bustos, evaluation practitioners who work and conduct Research on Evaluation (RoE) outside university settings. RoE activities are happening inside public, healthcare, and community settings. Yet, opportunities to formalize RoE in these settings can be overlooked. In this blog, we reflect on how we embed RoE in our contexts.

How we embed RoE into our practice

We use RoE to inform our evaluation practice. RoE on evaluator identity, intersectionality, and evaluation definitions informs how we frame evaluation to partners and colleagues. We also use RoE-guided principles on context and participatory evaluation for improving evaluation use to inform how we conduct evaluations.

We elevate RoE’s value within our organizations. We communicate RoE’s role in enhancing practice through journal clubs, internal training, and other knowledge-sharing spaces. This includes intentional team discussions that clarify distinctions between research, evaluation, research on evaluation, and research in evaluation.

We conduct RoE on our practice. Rachael partneres with colleagues to study how their team adhered to existing frameworks. Tatiana conducts scoping reviews on RoE and builds conceptual frameworks using RoE to understand what works.

We seek funding for our RoE projects. While RoE is often a “side quest” and not commonly funded, incorporating RoE into existing work offers funding opportunities. Tatiana leverages internal resources to fund RoE projects, while Rachael was able to obtain financial support for publications when her RoE was related to existing projects.

We engage in RoE opportunities outside of work.  Finally, our RoE work isn’t limited to the spaces in which we work. Both of us contributed to the Revised Standards from the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, served in leadership roles on the RoE TIG, and published articles that extend beyond our work in the recent Moving Research on Evaluation Forward special issue of New Directions for Evaluation.

Hot Tips

Here are a few more tips for practitioners to get started with RoE:

• Join the RoE TIG to learn more about RoE and connect with people outside of academic settings who are engaging with practitioners for RoE work. This is a great way to find thought partners and “test the waters.”
• Check out the special issue on new directions for RoE and bring these, or other RoE articles, to your teams for discussion. These discussions can deepen your understanding and help you identify colleagues who are also interested in RoE.
• Start by turning your literature review processes into systematic scoping reviews or examining your own practice. These approaches can extend your work’s impact beyond the evaluand (i.e., the subject of the evaluation). Additionally, if you start with existing work, you may be able to obtain financial support for publications from your funder or employer.
• Reach out to people who conduct RoE that you find interesting. This could open the door for future collaboration and expand your thinking about how the work you are doing could become RoE.

And for those already conducting RoE regardless of the setting:

• Comment on this blog with other ways that you embed RoE into your evaluation practice.
• Seek out practitioners to collaborate with on the RoE TIG discussion board and other channels, such as other TIGs, EvalTalk, or local AEA affiliates.
• Let practitioners know when their work could be framed as RoE and connect them to relevant RoE to support their practice. In other words, mentor them through the research and publication process to help them “RoE” themselves, and the field forward.

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Research on Evaluation (ROE) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our ROE TIG members. 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.