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 provided by such evaluations, although it too may focus on organizational change and development. These Weberian, ideal-type distinctions are crucial theoretically and practically because no number of discrete evaluation studies can be cumulated to result in ongoing ECB: Evaluation studies are distinct, although related, orientations and practices. ECB is more like an infinite game of ongoing, emergent rules, procedures, practices, and politics, and evaluation practice is more like a finite game of clear, normative, professional approaches and methods. ECB and evaluation practice can also be distinguished in their orienting perspectives and in related practitioner roles with ECB focused on the infrastructures and practices necessary to create and sustain in an organization an evaluation presence and the performance and use of quality studies. In contrast, the evaluator's perspective and related practitioner roles are oriented to performing the discrete, quality studies that are used.

From the program evaluation practitioner's perspective, developing and sustaining an evaluation unit within an organization focuses primarily on the finite task at hand. Typically, this means responding to the next request to conduct a study, standardizing data-collection instruments for use by multiple clients, and ensuring clients' use of the evaluation findings. In this way, developing and sustaining the unit is seen as responding to the demand for evaluation in the moment. Less attention is given to the larger goal of systematically creating ways for evaluation and its uses to be seen as regular practices throughout the organization.

For the ECB practitioner, however, the focus is on responding to requests for evaluation services and being mindful of how today's work will contribute to sustaining the unit in the longer term. This dual role might be thought of as “wearing bifocals” that allow a given situation to be assessed differently by the program evaluation practitioner and the ECB practitioner. Put differently, in interactions with a client, the evaluation practitioner asks the question, “How will this contribute to making the study better, making use of the results more likely, and making another quality study possible?” The ECB practitioner asks, “How will this moment in this particular evaluation contribute to the organization's learning and development such that the next study will be asked for and the results used?” In this way, the ECB practitioner [Page 39]considers how each study is connected to the development of the organization and to meeting the organization's goals and mission.

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