I'm Tristi Nichols, an international evaluator of social development programs, serving as a Board Member and Board Liaison to the Task Force undertaking the Guiding Principles Review since May 2011. The specific AEA Values Statement I have posted on my office wall refers to ethically defensible (and culturally responsive) evaluation practices that contribute to decision-making processes, program improvement, and policy formulation. The term used during the 2011 AEA Think Tank Workshop was "safeguarding" the evaluator's independence, so that (s)he may protect and defend the evaluand, evaluation process, and key findings from others' values. Issues regarding safeguarding the evaluator's independence are concerns that take place everywhere,
regardless of the sector, political context, geographic region, size of the organization (or client), scope of the evaluation, or methods used. In my view, these issues still remain a challenge. Through the course of conducting the review of the Guiding Principles, the work of the Task Force focused my attention on the need to acknowledge the (perceived) pressures on evaluators at times to engage in behavior that may threaten the integrity of the evaluation. Thinking through these challenges led me to reflect on my own practice, wherein I felt perceived pressures to put more/less emphasis on a stakeholder's perspective, highlight one methodology over another, showcase the evaluand's achievements, attenuate the challenges, and give greater attention verbally to a particular finding even after the report was submitted. I have served different evaluator roles throughout my career, including social justice advocate, capacity-builder / trainer, evaluation manager, expert, and internal evaluator. I discovered that in every role, these perceived pressures existed with varying degrees of intensity.

Detecting and understanding the origin of these perceived pressures has demanded new competencies, consequently opening doors to more challenging, yet richer, professional opportunities for me. For instance, unlike the past, it is no longer enough to have technical prowess, a healthy work ethic, flexibility, and a passion for the evaluation cause. In order to navigate through the ethical landscape, evaluators now require softer skills and diplomacy to communicate clearly and directly to their clients or within their own organizations (for internal evaluators) the necessary and important obligation to defend the evaluation findings. More than ever, evaluators must exploit on-line communities and resources to bolster their analytical and problem solving skills. Finally, being open to feedback, yet staying focused on maintaining independence, are elements that are becoming increasingly important for evaluators.

Join us January 16-23 as AEA's 2010 President, Leslie Cooksy, will headline the launch of the 2013 Thought Leaders Discussion Forum - and anticipate some slight changes to the existing format.

What is AEA's Thought Leaders Discussion Series?

AEA's Thought Leader Discussion Series is an online discussion that connects thought leaders in our field with AEA members, new and old alike. It is one of many ways AEA strives to build bridges among members and foster a sense of community. Most months, we host an asynchronous (not in real time) online exchange over the course of a week. During each exchange, an established evaluator or theorist contributes daily to an online dialogue around issues of importance to the field and to our professional practice. As a participant, it is up to you whether to sit back and watch the exchange or become an active contributor, asking questions of the speaker and your participant colleagues or providing insights based on your own background and experiences.

How does the Thought Leaders Discussion Series Work?

A host will introduce the week's thought leader, via an email to the discussion list, and provide a bit of background and context for the discussion. The thought leader will supplement that with their own emailed contribution to the list and then open up the forum to questions and dialogue. The participants and host are encouraged to share their reflections and questions. The thought leader and host will check emails throughout the week, and respond at least daily, to move the dialogue forward.

In 2013, anticipate slight changes to the Thought Leaders Discussion format.

• Rather than monthly, the series will be held every other month - making it easier both for recruitment and participation
• Rather than Sunday-Saturday, the series will run Wednesday-Wednesday - making it easier to monitor and digest early discussions and then more actively participate on weekends as well
• In addition to sessions with one Thought Leader, some sessions will be topical and feature a panel of interested participants

"There are some topics that people are very passionate about, some of which may even be spawned by previous sessions. There may not be a recognized leader for the topic, but rather a small group (2-3) who might be able to begin and guide a public conversation on the topic," notes Deb Rog, who proposed the Thought Leader Discussion Forum during her AEA presidency in 2009.

Who Will Lead January's Discussion?

Leslie Cooksy has been a professional evaluator for more than 25 years and is an established leader in the evaluation field. In addition to serving as 2010 President of AEA, she has served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Evaluation and as editor of AJE's Ethical Challenges section. She earned a doctoral degree in program evaluation and public policy from Cornell University, worked at and was awarded the U.S. Government Accountability Office's Meritorious Service Award, directed the Center for Community Research and Service at the University of Delaware and, in July 2012, joined the Sierra Health Foundation as its Evaluation Director.

Know a colleague or a topic you'd like to see on the Thought Leaders Forum? Send Deb a quick note and stay tuned for next year's lineup!

To read more or to sign up, visit AEA's Thought Leaders Discussion Web Page

Are you a published author or just looking for a good book?

Then stop by AEA's online AEA Member Bibliography. To visit, you can look for the Reading tab at the top of AEA's homepage and click on Links of Interest, where you'll see another link for Bibliography. Or you can click here for quick and easy access! You'll find in-print texts and journals/series. Whether you're looking for the next great book to read, searching for the most timely resources, looking for specific authors or would like to add yourself to the list, AEA's online bibliography provides an excellent starting point for your research projects and reading enjoyment. You'll be amazed at the wealth of talent among your peers and within the organization.

If you know of an entry that should be added to the list, please forward your entries to gwen@eval.org. Any previously published works are eligible as are upcoming books (but not individual journal articles, chapters, or reports), as long as the focus is on evaluation or evaluation-related methodologies. Give us a heads up on soon-to-be-released books and it just might be spotlighted in AEA's monthly newsletter where we profile new releases, talk to the authors and provide a link directly to the publisher's site.

Though authors have to be AEA members to be listed, the bibliography is viewable to anyone who visits. Feel free to share the link with anyone who might benefit from this resource. And happy reading - and writing.

AEA member Ian F. Shaw is author of Practice and Research, a new book by Ashgate Publications.

From the Publisher's Site:

"Practice and Research is an overview of Professor Ian Shaw's analysis of the complexity and challenges of the practice/research relationship in social work - a theme that has been the focus of much of his writing over his career.

Introduced with a new essay that reflects on the 'serendipity, misfires and occasional patterns' in his work, the book is grouped into five sections. It covers the following themes, each of which is fully contextualized:

* Perspectives on Social Work Research
* Evaluation
* Qualitative Social Work Research
* Practice and Research
* The Receiving End: Service Users and Research

This book has much to say about the relationship between social work practice and research and is a must-read for any social work student or practitioner."

From the Author:

"I suppose it was age as much as anything that prompted this set of essays - carpe diem and so forth. After forty years of trying to write, I had a sense of what I had been trying to say. I have been increasingly drawn to the general question of how to place a field or discipline (in my case social work) within wider scholarly enterprise, while seeing that enterprise as requiring what Max Weber (1948) called 'strange intoxication', calculation and ideas. Also I have gradually more been pulled back to my sociological roots.

"Two of the most stubborn and difficult to avoid options for presenting the relation of research and practice are to give research priority over practice (rationalism) or to give practice priority over research (romantic conservatism). Put more carefully, I have reached a position where I believe that:

• Practice (professional and other forms) poses challenges back to disciplinary work, rather than simply being 'based' on it.
• Emphasis on professional (in the sense of a discipline that people actively 'profess') distinctives is both inevitable but risky.
• There are merits of a relation between our various fields that is something like adjacent 'open systems', marked by intellectual reciprocity based on egalitarian respect.

"It was recognizing and rendering visible these unfinished themes that were perhaps the most rewarding aspects of working on this book."

About the Author:

Ian Shaw is Professor of Social Work at the University of York, England. He counts his Evaluating in Practice (Ashgate, 2011) as perhaps his most original work. He was lead editor for the Sage Handbook of Social Work Research (Sage 2010) and Sage Handbook of Evaluation (2006). His current projects include an extended historical study of Chicago University archives on the relationship of sociology and social work; a historical study of the British Journal of Social Work; and a study of the nature of research networks in social work. Find his research and publications here.

Go to the Publisher's Site