The Research, Technology and Development (RTD) Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG) within the American Evaluation Association has as its mission to advance the field of performance measurement and in-depth assessment of programs, particularly publicly funded RTD programs.
We provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, good practice, and emerging tools by:
- organizing the RTD portion of the AEA conference each year
- collecting and disseminating information related to good practice, as well as events of interest, and gray literature
Announcements
AEA Evaluation 2020: How Will You Shine Your Light?
Call for presentations, posters and papers – Deadline March 18, 2020
Please share this call for proposals!
The 2020 AEA Conference will be held in Portland, Oregon from Wednesday, October 26th through Saturday, October 31st. Last year, there were 10 sessions sponsored by the RTD TIG, and we expect that this year’s conference will once again attract a wide range of participants from around the world. TIG leadership intends to provide opportunities throughout the 2020 conference for all participants to share experiences and learn from one another. If you have specific ideas for activities, please contact us using the addresses for the TIG Leadership.
During the 2019 TIG business meeting and after, TIG leaders, members and friends discussed important topics for RTD evaluators, which have been distilled into the following main themes for which we invite proposals:
1. Current state of evaluation policy in RTD and its impacts on evaluation. The TIG seeks proposals that address whether new policies (such as the USA Evidence-Based Policymaking Act) have promoted evaluation within research organizations. Of particular interest are submissions that identify challenges in applying national-level evaluation policies specific to RTD, and lessons learned in overcoming those challenges.
2. Emerging methods and priority challenges in RTD evaluation to measure ‘societal’ impact. The TIG seeks proposals with the aim of setting an agenda for the next 3-5 years to address challenges related to measuring economic and social benefit of research, ideally, in a collaborative fashion. Of particular interest is new methodologies or approaches that have taken advantage of "big data" toward measuring societal impact.
3. Bibliometrics in the 2020s. The TIG seeks proposals describing methodological advances in developing better bibliometric measures of researchers, research projects/portfolios, and research organizations.
4. Communication and utilization of RTD evaluation findings. The TIG seeks proposals with the aim of identifying highly effective methods for summarizing and disseminating evaluation findings and for developing best practices and challenges for ensuring findings are utilized.
5. Data visualization to support RTD evaluation. The TIG seeks proposals that make use of new data visualization techniques or other best practices in data visualization to communicate RTD evaluation findings.
Although the TIG encourages proposals that address these critical issues, all topics will be considered. Proposals are accepted for a variety of formats, but poster proposals from students and new RTD evaluation professionals are especially welcome. To see presentations from previous AEA Annual Conferences, please visit our public TIG Library.
To submit your proposal or to get more information about the overall conference theme and event details, go to the Conference website. Select the RTD TIG for review of your proposal as part of the submission process. You will need a login account to enter a proposal. If you do not want to join AEA right now, you can create a non-member account entering just your name and email address.
Mark the dates on your calendar, and even if you do not wish to submit a proposal, please plan to attend!
RTD Topical Interest Group (TIG) Paper, February 2015
Evaluating Outcomes of Publicly Funded Research, Technology and Development Programs: Recommendations for Improving Current Practice (FINAL)
White paper SUMMARY slides
Generic Logic Models, collection over time