The American Evaluation Association (AEA) is a professional association for evaluators and those with a professional interest in the field of evaluation, including practitioners, faculty, students, funders, managers, and government decision-makers. As of 2014[update], AEA has approximately 7057 members from all 50 US states and over 60 other countries.
There is increasing evaluative interest in assessing not just the current effectiveness of programs but also their likely sustainability. Assessing the likely sustainability of a program, however, requires methodological judgments about the future and about the influences of many complex political, economic, and social factors, which themselves are likely to change. While strong confidence in these types of prospective judgments may continue to be elusive, careful consideration of some major factors—including the cyclical character of certain public interest values and the predictable influence of special interest groups—should be helpful in improving the current ability of evaluation practice to address sustainability issues. This chapter ends with a checklist of seventeen questions to help focus attention on relevant, accessible, but often ignored, program or policy areas affecting sustainability.
AbstractThe most useful and possibly the cheapest form of evaluation would yield results coinciding with ongoing management procedures. While this kind of evaluation may never be fully realized, it is possible to provide a continuous stream of evaluative data and analysis by introducing evaluation into project management at its inception. This chapter outlines such an approach.
