We acknowledge our limitations.

We are honest with ourselves and others about the limits of our individual and organizational expertise, capacity, and perspectives. We engage colleagues and partners to fill these gaps and strengthen our work.

We honor the humanity of all people. 

We recognize the dignity, complexity, experience, and expertise of every person. We celebrate diverse identities and perspectives as vital sources of innovation and insight. We acknowledge systemic inequities and strive to advance equity in all aspects of our work. 

We pursue excellence iteratively.

We seek feedback to improve and grow, learn from our experiences, and reflect on our work critically and constructively. We learn and adapt to elevate our future performance and impact.

We are open and honest.

We share information freely in the spirit of collegiality, openness, and accountability. We clearly communicate the reasons behind our decisions and actions. 

We work to expand the knowledge base about evaluation theory and practice by conducting research on evaluation, reflecting on our practice, and disseminating the products of evaluation scholarship. 

We create, curate, and share materials and activities to help others build their personal and organizational evaluation capacity and develop life-long skills. We prioritize open educational resources to promote equitable opportunities to learn about and benefit from evaluation. 

We contract, consult, and collaborate with organizations to design, conduct, and facilitate the use of evaluations. Our expertise in interdisciplinary evaluation complements the subject matter, cultural, and experiential expertise of those with whom we work. 

We engage in leadership through service to the University, our community, and the evaluation profession. We share our evaluation expertise to support others to effectively leverage evaluation in their endeavors. 

We promote evaluation as a distinct profession, discipline, and form of inquiry. We advocate for and uphold the ethical and practice principles and standards of the profession. We take responsibility for The Evaluation Center’s past role in limiting diversity in the evaluation field and strive to redress past harms. We honor our past while actively shaping the future of evaluation.

When evaluators engage the people involved in or affected by a program, it enhances the relevance, equity, and utility of an evaluation’s processes and results. Representatives from multiple groups, including program participants, staff, leaders, sponsors, and others should be involved, as their interest and ability allows, to maximize an evaluation’s value and impact.

Evaluators have a professional obligation to advance the common good and equity. We fulfill this responsibility by (1) using data to identify programmatic or systemic factors that promote or impede individual, community, and societal well-being; and (2) employing inclusive and fair practices that maximize benefit and minimize harm to the people involved in an evaluation. 

Evaluators customize evaluation designs to fit specific contexts. For every evaluation, we consider multiple factors to maximize its feasibility, credibility, technical quality, utility, and relevance. Key considerations include a program’s context; interest holders’ values and needs; systemic conditions; and resource availability. 

Decisions about an evaluation’s design, methods, instruments, data sources, or other technical matters are oriented toward answering evaluation questions. Evaluation questions focus on things that matter to interest holders, such as a program’s efficiency, implementation, outcomes, impact, and cost-effectiveness.

Evaluations benefit individuals and organizations by generating useful information and creating opportunities for evaluative thinking. Evaluators strive to generate actionable findings to inform program decisions. By engaging interest holders in evaluative processes and conversations, evaluators contribute to organizational learning and capacity development. 

Skilled evaluators integrate their knowledge of research methods and  evaluation-specific approaches, frameworks, and professional guidelines to design and conduct meaningful studies that are technically and ethically sound. We regularly engage in reflective practice to identify opportunities to improve our work and better understand how our positionality influences our decisions. 

As professional evaluators, we endorse and uphold the official standards, principles, and other tenets of the evaluation profession, including but not limited to the following:

• Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation’s Program Evaluation Standards, which call for evaluations to meet standards of utility, feasibility, propriety, accuracy, and accountability.
• American Evaluation Association’s Guiding Principles for Evaluators, which explains that evaluators must engage in systematic inquiry, be competent, act with integrity, demonstrate respect for people, and work for the common good and equity.
• American Evaluation Association’s Statement on Cultural Competence, which acknowledges the centrality of culture in evaluation and the need for evaluators to adapt their practices to maximize inclusion, responsiveness, and respect.
• American Evaluation Association’s Evaluator Competencies, which call for evaluators to be versed in the evaluation field’s foundational documents; skilled in qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods; adept at understanding and adapting practices to context; able to plan and manage the use of resources effectively; and effective at interpersonal communication and engagement.