Evaluation Love

At the risk of sounding incredibly nerdy, I loooovve evaluation processes. I think the people who evaluate programs and campaigns are incredibly under appreciated. Especially because evaluation methods help research teams, program developers and stakeholders understand how their interventions worked, why they worked, and what they can improve for the next round. Essentially, without evaluation processes, we would not have "evidence-based interventions." I also like the fact that these processes are highly structured but ]include a creative component as many times, you have to "think outside the box" to understand why certain things didn't work and how they could be modified to work in the future . Based on my enthusiasm for evaluation, it is not surprising that this week's lecture was my favorite. I really appreciate the chance to learn the details of evaluation methods. In PH 666 and 663, we've learned about the specific types of evaluations, how they relate to goals and objectives and specific examples of each. This is incredibly helpful in my work life as I am involved in evaluating programs but did not have the evaluation specific vocabulary to describe exactly what I've been working on for the last year!