Capacity Building

Capacity building in the context of evaluation is evaluation capacity building (ECB). ECB was defined conceptually by Compton, Baizerman, and Stockdill (2002) as “a context-dependent, intentional action system of guided processes and practices for bringing about and sustaining a state of affairs in which quality program evaluation and its appropriate uses are ordinary and ongoing practices within and/or between one or more organizations/programs/sites.”

ECB is understood as professional practice related to but distinct from professional evaluation practice. ECB is oriented toward the organization and its structure, social and cultural practices, and personnel, with the goal of making regular and ordinary in that context professional evaluation studies and their use. In contrast, professional evaluation is oriented toward managing or performing quality evaluation studies and using the data ...