What is the purpose of this issue?

In this proposed New Directions for Evaluation (NDE) issue, we aim to reflect on and strengthen the field’s understanding of promising efforts to evaluate evaluation capacity building (ECB) initiatives. In recent decades, we have witnessed increased interest in, research on, and practice of ECB (i.e. Preskill, 2014; Hargraves, et al., 2021; Bougeois, Lemire, Fierro, Castleman & Cho, 2022). Despite this increase in ECB-related scholarly and practice-oriented activities, significant gaps exist in our understanding of meaningful or effective ECB practices and how they are evaluated (Bougeois et al., 2022). Given existing literature on the evaluation of ECB efforts, there is an opportunity to expand methods used and applications of those methods across various settings. In the proposed NDE Issue, we argue that as evaluators, we have a professional obligation to evaluate ECB initiatives. Researchers examining ECB initiatives are further called to ensure that findings from their studies are applicable, actionable, or useful to those engaging in ECB practice. By dedicating an issue of NDE to this important topic, the opportunity exists to increase the field’s understanding of the importance of evaluating ECB efforts but also highlighting promising practices and key considerations as to how we think about ECB efforts and their effectiveness.