Participatory Evaluation for Researchers — Super Team Guide | Issue 11 of 12
Who's This For
You have built something. Over the past ten issues, you have developed a participatory evaluation approach — embedded activities, story capture, pattern recognition, improvement cycles, proposal language that integrates assessment into everything you do. It works. Your team understands it. And now someone new is joining. A graduate student hired to help with data collection. A community partner entering the partnership for the first time. An institutional staff member assigned to support your project. An external evaluator brought on board mid-award. They walk into a system that looks nothing like the evaluation they learned about in methods courses or experienced in other projects. Without intentional onboarding, they will default to what they know — and that will create friction with the approach you have built. This issue is about making sure new team members understand the philosophy, not just the procedures.