The Program Evaluation Standards, issued by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation, aim to enhance the quality of the professional practice of evaluation. However, three decades and two major revisions after publication of their first edition, little is known beyond anecdotal evidence about the actual use and impact of the standards on the profession. The standards themselves do not explicitly articulate the mechanisms which are expected to make them instrumental in improving the practice of evaluation. Based on theoretical considerations and an analysis of the standards' underlying assumptions, a conceptual framework is proposed which outlines such mechanisms on individual and evaluation policy levels. This action theory aims to guide evaluation policy in further promoting the standards’ application and utility. At the same time it can be used as a research framework for analyzing the standards' actual impact. An exploratory study is presented as an example for such research.#theoryofplannedbehavior #2011Conference #EvaluationPolicy #ResearchonEvaluation #programevaluationstandards