AES E-newsletter - December 2005

In this issue:

AES Board and Committee Reports
AES 2005 Brisbane Conference Report
AES 2005 Awards
AES 2006 Darwin Conference Update
International News and Conferences
Approaches to Ethics in the AES and AEA
Short Courses on Evaluation
Publications
Evaluation Resources on the Net
Positions Vacant
Get Involved in Your Regional Branch
Welcome New Members
AES Christmas Break Dates
Contact the E-news Editor

AES E-news Archive

2005
Issue 1 - April
Issue 2 - September

AES Board and Committee Reports
President’s Report

The Society held its 2005 Annual General Meeting at the Brisbane Conference in October and members received a number of reports from the Executive officers. Key points of the meeting were:

the Society is in sound financial shape, with reserves of nearly $200,000 as a result of the very successful conference in Adelaide, and a number of successful workshops including a workshop series conducted by John Owen;

membership has increased 12% to over 725;

the Society had a surplus in the 2004/5 budget year and a balanced budget for 2005/6 was approved at the meeting;

$500 has been allocated to each of the NZ branches to assist with conducting activities in their region; and

no increase in membership fees for 2005/6, and the Board will explore some new membership categories for consideration at the next AGM.

In addition, the following members were elected or appointed to the Board Executive:

President: Rick Cummings
Vice-President: Jenny Neale
Treasurer: Craig Trimble
Secretary: Ann Markewicz
Strategic Initiative: Nan Weihipehana

Regional Representatives

ACT: David Roberts
Auckland: Michelle Lennan
New South Wales: Marie Delaney
Northern Territory: Nea Harrison
Queensland: Diana Beere
South Australia: Rita Perkons
Tasmania: Thomas Hay
Victoria: Graeme Harvey
Wellington: Nan Weihipehana
Western Australia: John Scougall

Chairs of Standing Committees

2006 conference: Jenny Young
Awards: Peter Bycroft
Ethics: David Turner
International relations: Penny Hawkins
Publications: John Owen

Contact details for Board members are available on the AES website. Special thanks to Kim Lazenby for her contribution as Secretary and to Anne Barlow, Jenny Young, Graham Smith, Merrian McCormack, and Sue Paterson for the contributions as regional representatives, and Jenny Neale and Diana Beere for chairing the Awards and Brisbane Conference committees respectively.

In meetings of the new Board, the issue of changes to our legal structure and tax status have been a priority. The Board has decided to seek further advice on the legal structure, particularly its impact on New Zealand branches, and to proceed with an application to clarify our tax exempt status.

The focus for 2005/6 for the Board will be:

Improving Members Services
Working Effectively with Regions
Indigenous Evaluation
Governance of the Society, including financial prudence

In particular, there will be a focus on continuing to expand and improve our professional development workshops in the regions and at the conference in Darwin, to ensure the regions are well supported, to foster better understanding and practice in evaluation in Indigenous communities (including establishing a new award for best practice in this area), and to further increase our membership numbers.

Plans for the 2006 conference in Darwin are well underway and it promises to be an excellent conference. The Victorian Branch has agreed to conduct the 2007 conference and thanks to Graeme Harvey for taking up the chair of that conference committee.

On behalf of the AES Board, we hope you have a very pleasant and relaxing holiday break and we look forward to working with you in 2006.

Dr Rick Cummings - AES President

International Relations Committee Report

The IOCE Board meeting took place as planned in Toronto on 25th October followed by the Annual Meeting. As Secretary of IOCE I had a key role in organising the meeting with support from the IOCE Secretariat and in consultation with current IOCE Board members. The Interim Board was replaced through an election of a new IOCE Board at the Annual Meeting. I was nominated as the new President but declined, as I would not have sufficient time this year to commit to IOCE activities in such a front seat leadership role. However, I did agree to be re-elected as Secretary to provide continuity and transmit the institutional memory to the new Board.

IOCE membership has increased in recent months and the organisation now has the following associations as full members: AfrEA (Africa), ReLAC (Latin America), AES (Australasia), AEA (USA), CES (Canada), EES (Europe), UKES (UK), MES (Malaysia), AIV (Italy) with several other associations in the process of joining. Also WES (Wallonia) had joined as an Affiliate member, and IPEN (Independent Russian States) as an Associate member. UNICEF and PREVAL have both indicated strong interest in being Institutional Partners (sponsors). Now with a greater number of paid-up members of IOCE it will be possible to move ahead with seeking further sponsorship

The IOCE had confirmed interest in running a session at the Darwin conference. A proposal will be developed for this early in 2006. Also confirmed is the International Programme for Development Evaluation Training (www.ipdet.org) presenting a mini-IPDET (5-day) introductory evaluation course, before the Darwin conference. There is potential for participants from developing countries to obtain sponsorship from the World Bank and other development organisations to attend IPDET and staying on for the conference.

For more information about IOCE visit the website: http://www.ioce.net

Penny Hawkins - International Relations Committee (Chair)

As most readers of E-News would know, the 2005 AES International Conference and associated workshops were held in Brisbane from 9 to 12 October. Whilst we are still awaiting the formal evaluation report, the event appears to have been a great success in all respects.

Informal feedback suggests that the conference highlights included Phillip Adams’s opening address and the keynote presentation by international guest speaker Valerie Caracelli, who also conducted an excellent half-day workshop. Phillip was just as entertainingly provocative as we’d expected him to be, and it was interesting to hear how often subsequent conference speakers referred back to his challenges to the evaluation community. Valerie’s insights on current evaluation issues and debates in the USA were equally thought-provoking, while at the same time all who met her were struck by her warmth and evident enthusiasm at being part of the conference, and her interest in learning from Australasian evaluators.

I’d like to take this final opportunity to publicly thank my colleagues on the Brisbane Conference Committee. Their efforts to make the conference the best it could possibly be demonstrate the truth of the saying that if you want something done you should ask a busy person. All who were involved – Liz Baker, Toni Craig, Suzanne Hoverman, Robert Lake, Andrea Lanyon, Sandra Lerch, Patricia Régo, Craig Trimble, Ellen Vasiliauskas and Jill White – were quite busy enough in their professional lives without taking on the task of organising a conference in their ‘spare’ time. That they did so, cheerfully, and over such an extended period, is testimony to their commitment to the AES goals of improving the theory, practice and use of evaluation. Thanks too, of course, to all who attended the conference and/or participated in the workshops: without you, the Conference Committee’s efforts would have counted for little.

Diana Beere - Conference Convenor

(With a drum role) the 2005 award winners are:

The Caulley Tulloch Publication Prize
The aim of this award is to provide recognition to the best journal article or other publication in evaluation. It is funded by an endowment from Dr. Darrel N. Caulley. The award for 2005 goes to Glenys Jones and her team, Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania, for State of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

The Evaluation Study Award
This is awarded to an individual or team which has conducted an evaluation study that has made, or has the potential to make, a significant contribution to the practice or use of evaluation in either the public or private sector in Australasia. The 2005 award goes to Wendy Searle, Tania Slater, Trish Knaggs, Janet November and Christopher Clark, Ministry of Justice, New Zealand for Status Hearings Evaluation: A NZ Study of the Pre-Trial Hearings on Criminal Cases.

Evaluation Development Award
This is awarded to an individual or team which has provided leadership or innovation with respect to the practice or use of evaluation in either the public or private sector. The award for 2005 goes to Bruce Davidson, Noosa Council and Ellen Vasiliauskas, d-sipher pty ltd, for Noosa 2015-A Chosen Future.

Community Development Award
The aim of this award is to encourage evaluations that contribute to community development. The award for 2005 goes to Bradley Shrimpton, Centre for Program Evaluation and Mandy McKenzie, Domestic Violence Resource Centre, Melbourne, for the Evaluation of Burstingthebubble.com.

Congratulations to Dr Darrel Caulley - who was inducted into the AES Fellowship at the 2005 AES conference in Brisbane.

The Awards Committee for 2005 was convened by Jenny Neale and its members included Zita Unger, Paul Chesterton and Peter Bycroft. This was Jenny’s last year as Convenor and we are grateful for her hard work in this important role. Nomination forms for the 2006 Australasian evaluation ‘Oscars’, the AES Awards, should be available by the end of January when they can be downloaded from the AES website http://www.aes.asn.au/about/awards.htm

AES International Conference - Darwin
Evaluation in Emerging Areas
September 4-7, 2006

Themes

International development contexts
Indigenous contexts
Innovative approaches to working in changing contexts
New theoretical models and frameworks

The Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) extends a warm welcome to all those involved in evaluation or have an interest in evaluation to participate in the 2006 International Evaluation Conference on Evaluation in Emerging Areas. The conference will be of interest to practitioners, policy makers, service providers, academics, students and users of evaluation.

The conference theme is Evaluation in Emerging Areas including indigenous and international development, tourism, arts and culture, land management, natural resource management, remote and regional development, governance, cross government policy and program development.

Three keynote speakers from across the Asia-Pacific region will speak at the conference. These are Dr Ray Rist from the World Bank, Professor Masafumi Nagao, Research Professor at the Centre for the Study of International Cooperation in Education at Hiroshima University, Japan and Professor Konai Helu Thaman from the University of South Pacific, Japan. Professor Thaman is a leading Pacific researcher and evaluator well as an established poet. Negotiations are underway to run a mini training workshop through the International Program for Development Evaluation either prior to or following the conference. The conference Registration Brochure will be available at the end of May 2006.

The Call for Proposals Brochure was mailed to all AES members in late November and is also available on the AES website at http://www.aes.asn.au/conference/2006/conference_brochure.pdf

The deadline for proposals is 17 March 2006. Proposals will be accepted for pre-conference workshops (4th - 5th am September 2006), paper presentations, posters, roundtables, debates and panel discussions for the conference (5th pm -7th September 2006).

Jenny Young - Conference Convenor

The DAC Network on Development Evaluation Announces the Launch of The DAC Evaluation Resource Centre (DEReC)

The DAC Evaluation Resource Centre (DEReC) is a one stop shop designed to give the evaluation and development community easier access to evaluation publications by the DAC Network on Development Evaluation and its members. DEReC currently holds over 800 full evaluation reports, Annexes and (when available) Executive Summary reports.

Learn more about DEReC at: http://www.oecd.org/dac/evaluationnetwork

United States

American Evaluation Association 2006 Conference
Date: October 30 – November 4, 2006
Theme ‘The Consequences of Evaluation’
Where: Portland, Oregon

Learn more about the conference at: http://www.eval.org/

Europe

International NGO Training and Research Centre – 2006 Evaluation Conference
April 3 – 5 April, 2006
Title: ‘INTRAC 6th Evaluation Conference’
Location: KDK Conference Centre, The Netherlands

Learn more about the conference at: http://www.intrac.org/pages/conferences.html

At a joint forum held by the Wellington Evaluation Group (WEG) and the Association of Social Science Researchers on 2 November 2005, Dr David Turner (Ministry of Justice) and Dr Amanda Wolf (Victoria University of Wellington) spoke about their research on approaches to ethics in the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) and American Evaluation Association (AEA). The presentation focused on attitudes towards ethics in professional practice, looking for similarities and differences across the two societies.

The researchers used an approach called Q Methodology to systematically investigate evaluators’ subjective points of view on the role of ethics in professional practice. In a Q study, participants are asked to sort a set of statements on a topic in accordance with an instruction, such as how much they agree or disagree with a statement. In this research, the statements were provided by AES and AEA members. The correlations between different participants’ sorts are factor analysed to show how the sorts cluster. Researchers then develop interpretive profiles of the clusters and formulate hypotheses based on these interpretations.

A number of similarities appeared between the AES and AEA participants’ views. In both groups, professional standards were emphasised, including a regard for privacy and other rights of participants. Both groups emphasised a respect for different communities, and the need to practice competently within different cultures.

There were three key differences:

two of the AEA factors and one AES factor view evaluators as change agents, but the remaining factors do not;

AEA participants felt more strongly than AES participants that the responsibility for conducting evaluations according to ethical standards rests with the evaluator, rather than with the client;

AES participants emphasised participant or community empowerment, and cultural competence, more strongly than AEA participants did.

David Turner

In January and February 2006 the following short courses on evaluation will be held in Melbourne:

Introduction to program logic (1 day 31 Jan 2006)
Build a people-focused program logic (2 days 2 & 3 Feb 2006)
Planning your evaluation study (2 days 7 & 8 Feb 2006)
Most Significant Change Technique (2 days 14 & 15 Feb 2006)
Introduction to qualitative methods for evaluation (2 days 21 Feb 2006)
Qualitative analysis for reporting and evaluation (2 days 23 & 24 Feb 2006)

The training is run by Dr Jess Dart and the Clear Horizon team. Clear Horizon specialises in running participatory and hands-on training sessions on monitoring and evaluation. More information about all these courses and booking forms can be found at www.clearhorizon.com.au or by contacting admin@clearhorizon.com.au.

A special discounted rate of 50% off is available for the course to those people who attended the half-day workshop on People Focus Program Logic at the AES pre-conference workshop in Brisbane.

Dr Jess Dart

The Committee, through EJA editors, Ros Hurworth and Delwyn Goodrick, have worked very hard to restore the regular production and dissemination of the Journal to members during 2005. Three editions will have been produced during 2005 (the final one will be available early in the new year). The editors have decided on some minor changes to format which will become apparent from the final edition for this year, and on expanding the present format to include a book review section. The policy of the AES is to put each edition of the EJA up on the AES website six months after it is published in print format. I encourage you to send material to the AES so that it can be considered for publication. Remember that we have space for both refereed and non-refereed articles.

This brings me to the AES web-site which is currently being redeveloped. We expect the new improved and more responsive web-site to replace the current one early in the new year. During 2006, we will progressively introduce features such as on-line subscriptions and more extensive conference coverage to complement the present features of the site. I urge you to visit the present web-site for information about the annual conference to be held in Darwin in September 2006.

Finally, there is e-news, which is edited by Brad Shrimpton, who is responsible for the fact that you are reading this copy. We hope that you find the material assembled interesting and useful – and Brad encourages contributions.

I urge you to write to me about relevant matters, including constructive criticism about the AES knowledge products over which the Publications Committee has responsibility at j.owen@unimelb.edu.au

Dr John Owen - Publications Committee (Chair)

New Books

Merriam, S & Associates. (2005) Qualitative Research in Practice – Examples for Discussion and Analysis. San Francisco: Josey Bass

Steckler, A. & Linnan, L. (2005) Process Evaluation for Public Health Interventions and Research, San Francisco: Josey Bass

Ulin, P. Robinson, E. & Tolley, E. (2005) Qualitative Methods in Public Health – A Field Guide for Applied Research, San Francisco: Josey Bass

Wholey, J. Hatry, H & Newcomer, K. (2005) Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation (2nd Edition), San Francisco: Josey Bass

Victoria's first community-led Implementation Review of Recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was tabled in Parliament in October. The review incorporated a wide-ranging consultation which involved more than 165 meetings with the Koori community and stakeholders.

Information about the review and reports based on the review can be found at: http://www.justice.vic.gov.au (click on the link ‘Victorian Implementation Review’)

New Methodology for Describing, Specifying and Planning Evaluations Released

Dr Paul Duignan's work in outcomes theory as the 2005 Fulbright Senior Scholar (NZ) has now been further developed into the Outcomes Is It Working Analysis (OIIWA) approach. This approach provides a systematic methodology for specifying evaluation design types (for rapidly communicating the nature of an evaluation design) and developing comprehensive evaluation plans that integrate indicator measurement and high-level outcomes attribution evaluation designs.

OIIWA is attempting to develop a generic methodology for evaluations which can be used to specify almost any type of evaluation philosophy, approach, method or design. It has been used with government departments in New Zealand and the same methodology (under the name REMLogic) has been used by the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A draft guide to the methodology is available from www.oiiwa.org and Paul Duignan would very much appreciate receiving member's feedback on this new methodology.

Paul Duignan

Looking for a new job? Visit the 'of interest' page on the AES website.

Looking for new staff? Contact the AES office aes@aes.asn.au to advertise positions on the AES website.

To access the latest reports and news on upcoming activities at your local AES branch click on the 'Regional' link on the AES website. Links to regional web pages and the email address of regional representatives are also provide below.

2005 Regional Representatives

Auckland
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/auckland/
Michelle Lennan
mlennan@ihug.co.nz

Canberra
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/canberra/
David Roberts
David.Roberts@centrelink.gov.au

New South Wales
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/nsw/
Marie Delaney
marie.delaney@artd.com.au

Northern Territory
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/nt/
Nea Harrison
neaharrison@octa4.net.au

Queensland
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/qld/
Diana Beere
diana.beere@qed.qld.gov.au

South Australia
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/sa/
Rita Perkons
RPerkons@Anglicare-SA.org.au

Tasmania
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/tas/tas.htm
Thomas Hay
thomas.hay@development.tas.gov.au

Victoria
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/vic/
Graeme Harvey
Harvey.Graeme.lg@edumail.vic.gov.au

Western Australia
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/wa/
John Scougall
jscougal@bigpond.net.au

Wellington
http://www.aes.asn.au/regions/wellington/
Nan Weihipehana
nanw@clear.net.nz

Auckland

Haydn Edmonds - Mayhem Solutions Ltd
Marianne McGee - Mayhem Solutions Ltd
Karen Johns - Karen Johns and Associates
Michele Lennan

Canberra

Yvonne Dunlop - Dept of Employment and Workplace Relations
Jocelyn Hong - Colmar Brunton Social Research
Melissa Cretikos - Colmar Brunton Social Research
Jose Acacio - Department of Health and Ageing

New South Wales

Annette Michaux - The Benevolent Society
Rosemary Cox - Department of Employment & Workplace Relations

Northern Territory

Allan Arnott - Charles Darwin University
Ian Falk - Charles Darwin University

Queensland

Samuel Boamah - DATSIP
Erik Berrevoets - Department of Employment and Training
Lisa Crossland - Rural Health Research Unit

South Australia

Vanessa Ryan - Lyell McEwin Health Service
Geoff Moyle - URS Australia
Sara Pfeiffer - Primary Mental Health Care Australian Resource Centre
Donna Broadhurst - World Wide Project Management Services

Victoria

Nicholas Bate - Department of Primary Industries (Victoria)

Western Australia

Rita Freijah - Curtin University
Linda Grenade - Centre for Research into Aged Care Services

Wellington

Kate Averill - BRC Marketing and Social Research
Rashmi Rajan - NZ Police
Vallabh Patel - Ministry of Consumer Affairs
Denise Lievore - Victoria University of Wellington
Ruth Wallis - Department of Labour
Mary Adams - Department of Labour
Josie Roberts - New Zealand Council for Educational Research
Elaine Mossman - Victoria University

International

Brian Gaius-Monie - National Department of Education
Pala Wari - National Department of Education

The AES office will be closing on Friday 23 December and reopening Tuesday 10 January.

If you have contributions or a notice for E-News please email the E-News editor, Brad Shrimpton bshrimpt@unimelb.edu.au

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM E-NEWS!