Participatory Evaluation for Researchers: Super Team Guide | Issue 11 of 12

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.