JBA Staff to Demonstrate Toolkit for Evaluation Scholars and Practitioners

JBA staff will present at the 33rd conference for the American Evaluation Association (AEA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota next month. The November 11–16 meeting will bring together evaluators, evaluation scholars, students, and evaluation users from around the world for professional sharing on the international discipline and practice of evaluation. The 2019 conference theme is Paths to the Future of Evaluation: Contribution, Leadership, and Renewal.

Elliott Graham, Heidi Melz, and Anne Fromknecht will demonstrate a toolkit published in 2018 to introduce formative evaluation, a method for evaluating programs during early implementation to inform program improvement and assess readiness for rigorous summative evaluation. They will introduce formative evaluation’s key elements, describe necessary preconditions and groundwork, and outline the steps to design and conduct an evaluation and use related findings.

JBA developed the Formative Evaluation Toolkit: A Step-by-Step Guide and Resources for Evaluating Program Implementation and Early Outcomes on behalf of the Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families. It is primarily intended for child welfare agencies and professionals to use in partnership with program evaluators, but others in human services may also find it useful.