Seeing What's Already There: A Demonstration of Document Modeling in Evaluation Practice

Please join us for our upcoming professional development meeting on Friday September 18th, 12:00 - 1:30 pm.

Seeing What's Already There: A Demonstration of Document Modeling in Evaluation Practice

Jacqueline H. Singh, MPP, PhD

Evaluation often begins with existing documents—program descriptions, policies, strategic plans, proposals, websites, and grant materials. Yet evaluators can quickly move from these sources to theories of change, logic models, evaluation questions, and methods without first asking: What does the document actually articulate?

Using examples at different levels of scale and complexity, this interactive demonstration introduces Document Modeling as a way of transforming what a document articulates into a structured representation that can be examined as a whole. Participants will explore how making that structure visible can create a concrete point of reference for shared understanding, stakeholder dialogue, and subsequent evaluation activities, including evaluability assessment, program theory, logic modeling, evaluation planning, and design. Participants will consider the important boundary between representing what a document articulates and interpreting what its authors may have intended, and leave with an introduction to Document Modeling steps and questions they can apply when approaching documents in their own work.

This professional development opportunity is provided at no cost to IEA members. Those who are members of an AEA affiliate will have the opportunity to join at no cost using a code that will be provided to local affiliate groups.