Progress and future directions in evaluation

Last year, the American Evaluation Association celebrated its tenth anniversary. The annual conference, held in November 1996 and entitled AEA: A Decade of Progress, Looking Back and Looking Forward, provided an opportunity to review the history and status of the field of evaluation and chart future directions. For this volume, we have selected a broad sampling of papers from this conference to offer the reader an array of perspectives on where the field has been and where it should be going.

The seven authors, all seasoned evaluators, collectively provide a review of the development of evaluation and offer perspectives on its current status and its future directions. Among the several themes noted, one cross-cutting theme emerges as a guiding beacon for the future. Evaluators, whether conducting a single study or a set of studies, are contributing to a broader enterprise.

In doing so, we must be more cognizant of our responsibility to design and implement our studies with this broader contribution in mind.