Post-Event Resources: Unappreciative Inquiry Webinar

Is the draft evaluation report that landed on your desk from the external evaluation team you hired exemplary, or not quite? Are you afraid you might have a “surrealist evaluation” that reports the “most insignificant change” through “mixed-up methods”?  Before moving on to utilizing your evaluation findings, evaluation reviewers and managers have a responsibility to ensure that evaluation findings and conclusions are credible and well supported with logic and evidence. 

This presentation introduced a 12 point checklist to help prompt critical thinking and guide evaluation reviewers through common pitfalls in program evaluations based on the presenter's many years of experience in reviewing and critiquing external evaluations of USAID programs. Numerous examples from USAID evaluations were provided to highlight the practical relevance of the checklist. Time was allotted at the end for questions from attendees. Also cat photos...there were cat photos.

Key takeaways from this webinar include:

• Prior to considering an evaluation worthy of use, commissioners of evaluation have a responsibility to ensure that evaluation findings, conclusions, and recommendations are credible and well supported with logic and evidence. 
• "Unappreciative Inquiry" is just another way of describing a critical, skeptical review of an evaluation report for potential weaknesses in credibility, validity, and soundness.
• The Unappreciative Inquiry Checklist includes five rules for preparing to read an evaluation report and 12 items to look out for in an evaluation report that might suggest problems or potential problems with the credibility of the evaluation. 
• Everyone loves cat photos.