Senior Research Scientist NORC at the University of Chicago Central Lake, Michigan, United States
This presentation describes RC’s evaluation and ECB revision project from the perspective of the evaluation consultant, Meg Hargreaves, a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago. She will discuss the processes and methods used to review and update RC’s evaluation goals, theory of change, learning and evaluation questions, data collection methods, tools and metrics, analytic approaches, reporting practices, and evaluation capacity building activities. The project was informed by AEA’s guiding principles, specifically Principle A: Systematic Inquiry, Principle B: Evaluator Competence, and Principle D: Respect for People.
To ensure RC’s updated evaluation and ECB practices addressed RC’s focus on systems change, alignment with its guiding principles, diverse, inclusive, and equitable practices, and use of storytelling, the project also used the Equitable Systems Change Evaluation Framework (ESCEF). Developed by NORC evaluators, the Equitable Systems Change Evaluation Framework (ESCEF) is designed to advance the practice of evaluating equity-centered systemic and structural change initiatives. The ESCEF integrates culturally responsive and equitable evaluation and systems- and complexity-informed evaluation to provide a platform to more accurately capture the “story” of complex initiatives and opportunities to increase their effectiveness and impact.
