The AES Awards for Excellence in Evaluation aim to recognise and share excellence in evaluation theory, practice and use by motivating people to come into and stay in the field of evaluation; promoting the use of evaluation for positive impact and social good, for example supporting positive outcomes for Indigenous communities; and promoting advances in the field of evaluation.
The six AES Awards for Excellence in Evaluation are each focused on specific areas of the evaluation field such as the development of evaluation systems, enhancing the social good and evaluation publications.
The annual Awards recognise leading evaluators, leading evaluations, evaluation best practice and emerging evaluators.
The AES views evaluations as a partnership between the commissioner, the evaluator and the participants of the project. The Awards recognise the role of all the partners to an evaluation project, not just the evaluators.
The AES encourages all Award recipients to play an active role in promoting excellence in evaluation. Award recipients will be asked to consider ways in which their knowledge and experience may be shared with others and may be asked to contribute to articles and other promotions about the Award.
The Awards are the specific responsibility of the Awards and Recognition Working Group.
Receiving an Award offers significant peer recognition that has often proven an important contributor to professional and commercial success, and academic career progression.
A nominee must have been a member of the AES for a minimum period of 12 months prior to the nomination closing date.
Specific exceptions to this requirement are detailed below:
- a nominee for the Emerging New Talent Award must have been a member at the time of nomination but is exempt from the 12-month minimum membership requirement
- in the case of a group nomination, at least one nominee must meet the 12-month minimum membership requirement
- for the Evaluation Journal of Australasia Publication Award and in the case of joint authorship of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia article at least one of the authors must meet the 12-month minimum membership requirement.
Nominations usually open in May and awards are presented during Gala Dinner as part of the AES Annual Conference
There are six categories of Awards:
- Evaluation Systems Award
- Indigenous Evaluation Award
- Evaluation Journal of Australasia Publication Award
- Public Sector Evaluation Award
- Emerging New Talent Award
- Award for Enhancing the Social Good
Detailed information is available in the Award categories section.
Note: In the event that no nominations in an Award category meet the required standard, no Award will be given in that category.
The Awards are judged using four criteria:
- Professionalism
- Ethical conduct
- Excellence of the evaluation work
- Award specific sub-criteria.
The first two criteria – professionalism and ethical conduct – mainly apply to the role of the evaluator and/or the evaluation team and must be clearly demonstrated. The principle of excellence and award specific sub-criteria are mainly concerned with evaluation practice, theory and products. Excellence is assessed on a scale against the attributes relevant to the category of Award. Award specific sub-criteria apply to the Indigenous Evaluation Award and the Evaluation Journal of Australasia Publications Award.
Detailed information is available in the Assessment criteria section.
The nomination process is fully online. Hard copies of submissions are not accepted.
For details on what is required to ensure a successful nomination refer to the Section Documents and forms required to nominate.
Assessors are provided with a summary of nominations and are required to declare any potential conflict of interest. If a conflict of interest is declared, the assessor will not be involved in any deliberations or adjudication relating to that nomination.
Each nomination is reviewed by at least two assessors, based on their experience/skills.
In the event that the selected assessors are unable to agree on the relative merit of a nomination, an additional assessor reviews the nomination before a final decision is made.
In the event that no nominations in an Award category meet the required standard, no Award will be given in that category.
Formal commendations are not given but good practices that do not receive an award are recognised during the awards ceremony.
Recommendations are submitted to the AES Board for approval.
The Board’s decisions will be communicated to Award recipients prior to formal announcement of the Awards each year.
All nominations and supporting documentation are treated as commercial-in-confidence and are confidentially handled and stored, and all copies appropriately destroyed at the conclusion of the Awards process by the AES and the Awards assessors.
The ARWG strongly encourages recipients to share their evaluation work with the AES community to contribute to improving collective practice. Recipients of the Indigenous Evaluation Award agree to publish their evaluation products on the AES website.