What happens when your evaluation career ends up lasting 35 years? If you attend the AEA Conference almost every year, you accumulate a lot of evaluation issues and lessons learned. This ignite included a “grab bag” of lessons learned from the presenter’s prior panel and paper presentations summarized in Ignite rapid fire form. Some of the issues presented are persistent, while others have evolved over time. As a collection, the 15 to 18 issues presented span the range of evaluation methods and issues. Many focus on government evaluation issues, given the author’s career roles as a local government internal evaluator and federal contractor external evaluator. The collection provided a fast paced and entertaining review of evaluation issues from the last 35 years.I am a professional evaluator. I was trained in Public Administration and Organizational Behavior and Development (MPA, Ph.D.), but evaluation is my home field. I was an inaugural member of AEA, and a member of the Evaluation Research Society before that. I was the founding chair of two AEA Topical Interest Groups (Government Evaluation and Graduate Student and New Evaluators) and chaired a third TIG (Nonprofit and Foundation Evaluation). I have served on the Board of a local AEA affiliate, Washington Evaluators, and served as its President. I have served on several AEA task forces and working groups, and am a frequent contributor to AEA365. I have presented at more than 25 AEA conferences. I support AEA and AEA has supported me.As a result of this experience, there are a number of issues I have addressed over the years. I have participated in a couple of Ignite presentations at AEA and the Eastern Evaluation Research Society. I like the challenge of taking the breadth of issues on which I have presented over the years and converting these issues to concise 15 second slides that are graphically intriguing and substantively meaningful despite their conciseness.The issues that could be addressed include:• RCTs and the gold standard• Challenges in contracting for evaluation• The relationship of performance measurement and evaluation• Evaluation and performance measurement use• Types of strategic plans and their impact on evaluation• Government performance and evaluation• The importance of government standards and guidelines
Bernstein 2018 AEA Ignite Presentation audio.00:05:35