I bet this has happened to you. You are at a dinner party, neighborhood get together, or some other social event, and someone asks you the most dangerous question, “So, what do you do for a living?” If you answer honestly, “I’m an evaluator,” you will spend at least 30  ...

This article is drawn from the personal experience of two evaluators working in a post-disaster context. While the evaluators, also the authors of this article, were both experienced in a range of evaluation settings, they found that little in the evaluation literature prepared for them for working in such a ...

Novice evaluators in Aotearoa New Zealand have few resources to assist them with reconciling the complex philosophical, theoretical, and practice tensions inherent in programme evaluation. This article provides guidelines to assist novice evaluators in their journey to become “thoughtful” practitioners balancing methodological credibility with stakeholder empowerment. The approach is informed  ...

The term developmental evaluation was coined by Michael Quinn Patton in the mid-1990s to describe the role of evaluators in the development of an innovative initiative. Core evaluation skills, such as articulating the initiative’s theory of change, asking evaluative questions, and providing timely information on emerging results, help the initiative ...

This article aims to document and evaluate the effectiveness of Te Ara Hou—The Māori Achievement Collaboratives (MACS). MACS is a nationwide grassroots educational leadership professional development project comprising 63 primary and intermediate school principals. These educational leaders meet at hui and wānanga several times a year to collectively engage with recent research and professional development to ...

Developing evaluation capacity with non-government organisations (NGOs) in New Zealand is in vogue, with funders increasingly keen to demonstrate that their investments in social-service programmes are outcomes-focused and providers keen to demonstrate the difference they are making. This article presents a case study of how a large philanthropic trust, focused ...

Indigenous evaluators, and evaluators who position themselves in the transformative paradigm, share a common interest in positive transformation for those who experience discrimination and oppression. The determination of strategies for exploring how evaluators can contribute to positive transformation is complex territory. In this article we explore the common ground and ...

This article reports the results of a meta-evaluation of 30 publicly accessible evaluation reports written or commissioned by 20 New Zealand public-sector agencies during the period 2010–2013 to understand how evaluative reasoning is being practised in Aotearoa New Zealand. The reports were examined to find evidence of five key elements of evaluative reasoning, namely, evaluative ...

Whānau Ora, introduced as a government initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand in 2010, was designed to support collaboration and effective service delivery by Māori non-government organisations. The aim of Whānau Ora is to improve heath and social outcomes for whānau. Action research was conducted to support this initiative, with action researchers walking alongside Whānau Ora ...

Wairua (spirit) is threaded through the cultural beliefs, practices, and values of Māori, the indigenous peoples of New Zealand. It is an inherent part of the daily life and cultural vitality that is embedded in Māori services and programmes. In a wānanga (forum for discussion and learning) Māori and Pasifika (peoples from the Pacific Islands ...