Unfolding the Evaluation Journey

Evaluation isn't a linear process — it's a dynamic and evolving journey, shaped by continuous learning and reflection. Unfolding the Evaluation Journey invites us to approach evaluation as a path filled with opportunities to learn, adapt, and deepen our understanding of the practice and its impact.

Whether you're just beginning your evaluation journey, contribute to evaluation through your work, or have years of experience, we all encounter moments of creativity, exploration, and growth. This conference is an opportunity to share those experiences — to highlight successes, explore emerging questions, and uncover new possibilities together. We will also reflect on how our evaluation practices and skills evolve over time, how we make meaning amid complexity, and how diverse perspectives shape and guide our evaluation journey.

The 2025 conference theme will be explored across three streams, representing different stages of an evaluation. We also strongly encourage thoughtful integration and discussion of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in sessions across all streams.

Stream 1: Planning to Implementation

This stream invites exploration of the opportunities and challenges encountered when planning or implementing evaluations — whether you're shaping your first evaluation or refining a well-practiced approach. You might share lessons from developing timelines, managing shifting priorities, collaborating with partners, or navigating uncertainty in the planning process. Consider what supports or complicates the process, and how your approach or perspective has developed throughout your own evaluation journey.

You’re welcome to reflect on experiences, raise questions, or share emerging practices.

Some guiding questions:

• How can you lay the groundwork for ethical and inclusive evaluation in the planning stage? And how can you action this throughout implementation?
• In what ways have you — or could you — meaningfully engage partners during planning and implementation?
• What makes a good evaluation proposal?
• How have you worked with a client/internal partner to scope an evaluation or assess the evaluability of a program/initiative?
• What challenges or tensions have you encountered in balancing different priorities or timelines in the evaluation planning or implementation process? And how can we address them?

Additional prompts for emerging evaluators to consider:

• Have you been part of planning an evaluation, even in a support or learning role? What did you observe or take away from that experience?
• What questions come up for you when starting or contributing to an evaluation project?
• Are you curious about how evaluators set the scope of a project? What would you want to know or explore?

Stream 2:  Approaches, Methods, and Analyses

This stream focuses on how evaluation approaches, methods, or analysis strategies  are chosen, adapted, and co-created — and what that means for the work. Whether you’ve applied a well-established method, experimented with a new method, or are thinking through possibilities, this is a space to reflect, share, and learn.

You might share your experiences or raise burning questions.

Some guiding questions:

• What novel evaluation approaches have you used? What worked well and what learnings can you share?
• How did your chosen approach support deeper insight or shift how the evaluation was understood?
• What informed your choice of methods, and how did it shape the evaluation?
• How did you adapt your methods throughout the evaluation process?
• How have participatory or co-designed approaches affected relationships, roles, or learning within your evaluation work?
• Who was involved in making sense of the data, and how did that process evolve?

Additional prompts for emerging evaluators to consider:

• Have you supported data collection, analysis, or reporting in an evaluation? What did you learn from that role?
• What questions do you have about choosing approaches and methods, or about engaging people in making sense of evaluation findings ?
• Have you studied or tried out a particular evaluation approach or method that you'd like to reflect on or share your learnings about?

Stream 3: Knowledge Translation

This stream explores what happens after evaluation information is gathered— how findings are interpreted, communicated, and used. Whether you're experimenting with new ways of sharing insights, learning from something that didn’t go as planned, or thinking about how evaluation contributes to action, your reflections are welcome here.

You don’t need to have a polished product or model — this is also a space to share what you’re trying, wondering about, or learning.

Some guiding questions:

• How can we develop useful and accessible knowledge sharing products for different audiences?
• How are justice, equity, diversity and inclusion principles reflected in how findings are shared or framed?
• Where does the role of the evaluator end? How can we help clients/partners action evaluation findings?
• What role do knowledge users (e.g., clients, communities, decision-makers) play in shaping how findings were shared or used? Have you seen evaluation findings being used in a way that has surprised you — or not being used when you expected them to be?
• What insights or surprises have emerged during data interpretation or dissemination?

Additional prompts for emerging evaluators to consider:

• What do you want to share about your experiences with evaluation knowledge translation? Have you helped prepare materials or presentations to share evaluation findings? What did you learn from that experience?
• How do you think evaluators can support action or change after an evaluation ends?
• What questions do you have about how to share evaluation findings in more engaging or inclusive ways?

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