aes26 International Evaluation Conference

Welcome to Country
Opening address: President, Australian Evaluation Society

Being comfortable with discomfort
Robyn Ober, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, Lead Researcher and Educator

This keynote challenges evaluators and commissioners to get comfortable with discomfort, and to rethink what ethical, rigorous evaluation looks like when it happens on Country.

Responding to the aes26 theme Making Space, Valuing Place, Dr Robyn Ober draws on three decades of practice in Aboriginal communities to show how traditional knowledge systems and contemporary evaluation can work together.

Through vivid stories from remote and very remote contexts, the talk brings to life the tensions at the heart of evaluation practice: timelines versus relationships, control versus trust, and methodological neatness versus lived reality. At the centre is the Community Researcher Approach, where local people are co-researchers who shape the questions in collaboration with evaluators, lead conversations in language, and make meaning on their own terms.

The talk argues that ethics and integrity are enacted in how we show up, who holds authority, and whether participants’ voices are recognised, respected and valued so they feel safe to share their own truths. Integrity is also enacted when Aboriginal people can see that the purpose of evaluation is for the benefit of Aboriginal people. You’ll leave with practical ways to commission and conduct evaluation on Country to strengthen voice, evidence quality and impact.

Authors: Caitlin Morton, Maggie Hawkins (Attorney General's Department)
This session poses the question – how should we evaluate legal policy? Evaluators across all sectors encounter legal frameworks, yet few forums explicitly address how law itself can and should be evaluated. This session seeks to help carve out that space within evaluation practice.

Strong approaches to evaluating legal policy are critical to achieving just, fair, and secure society - the remit of the Attorney-General's Department. In this session, past and current evaluators from the AGD reflect on observations, challenges, and conversations, and invite discussion on what it looks like when legal policy is working well. We present an overview of existing dialogue on this question, and argue that it is critical to examine the social and ethical foundations of legal policy, the principles that inform legal policy, and how the law can support the operation of impactful legal policy.

We will investigate how law does and does not align with the beliefs and assumptions of the communities it touches, and how law is interpreted and put into practice. Together we will explore localisation as a major challenge and opportunity in evaluating legal policy – noting the persistent regional/metro divide in accessing legal services, and diversity between communities and across states, which always requires collaboration.

This session is critically important to evaluators as law touches all public policy, which in turn impacts the operations of not just federal governments, but local and state governments, private businesses, community organisations, not-for-profits, and more.

Authors: Jen Lorains (Children's Ground), Veronica Doolan (Children's Ground), Pauline Grant (Children's Ground), Jackie Treeves (Children's Ground)

For too long our people have been the subjects not the leaders of evaluation and research: “Our people have been researched to death. It’s time we researched ourselves back to life” (William Tilmouth, Senior Arrernte man).
Children’s Ground (CG) is disrupting the status quo in research and evaluation. From daily data collection and designing evaluation tools, to analysing evaluation data through community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks relevant to each place.

Using practice evidence and collaborative reflection about how First Nations communities are leading service/program evaluation for their families and place, the workshop learning objective is that participants will increase their understanding of culturally grounded evaluation and gain practical strategies and skills that can be applied to their evaluation context.

The workshop will consist of two parts, including CG sharing practice evidence, followed by collaborative group/table strategy development.

Firstly, CG’s evaluation principles will be outlined, with First Nations leaders sharing experiences in action. Participants will reflect on 2-3 principles, documenting their effective and challenging experiences of working in line with the principes, then sharing with the larger group. CG’s First Nations leaders will respond, building on the knowledge being generated by the participants.

Secondly, CG’s First Nations leaders will share experiences of developing community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks, including a visual walk through of 2-3 frameworks developed by First Nations communities across three culturally and geographically diverse regions. Comparative examples of evaluation data analysis between CG’s cultural and western evaluation frameworks will also be shared, including methodological implications.

Participants will collaboratively document ideas for supporting First Nations people/communities to develop community and culturally centred evaluation frameworks in their context, then sharing with the larger group.

We believe learning how to embed culturally grounded evaluation from First Nations community’s real-world experience is an important contribution to holistic learning, complements theoretical learning.

Author: Salli Cohen (The Policy Room)
This presentation explores the uncomfortable space where policy and evaluation structurally reinforce harm. Its objective is to challenge assumptions of neutrality and examine how evaluative frameworks can either illuminate or obscure inequity.
The core argument is threefold: (1) evaluation and policy are never neutral and must interrogate power; (2) systems alignment and cultural authority determine whether outcomes are real or performative; and (3) accountability must ask “for whom” evaluation and policy work; and who bears the cost.
The session blends applied case insight with structured reflection and peer dialogue to provoke critical engagement and practical recalibration.

From evidence to impact: reclaiming evaluation as a means to an end
Lígia Teixeira, Founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact

Evaluation has never been more sophisticated, yet many challenges it seeks to address remain stubbornly persistent. Across sectors, we generate high-quality evidence, but too often struggle to translate it into meaningful, sustained impact. The risk is not just a lack of rigour, but a loss of connection to purpose: the way evaluation is used within systems can allow it to become an end in itself, rather than a means to improve lives.This keynote argues for renewed focus on evaluation as a discipline of impact. Drawing on international efforts to tackle homelessness, it explores how outcomes are shaped not by individual interventions alone, but by the systems in which they operate. Without a systems lens, even strong and diverse forms of evidence – quantitative, qualitative and lived - can lead to fragmented action, missing the broader dynamics that ultimately determine success.

The keynote reflects on how evaluation can better connect global insight with local context, enabling faster learning while respecting place-based realities. It also argues that effective systems prevent harm before it occurs, rather than responding once it is entrenched.

This is a call to re-centre evaluation on its core purpose: not just to understand the world, but to change it.

Authors: Nic Vogelpoel (Day Four Projects), Malika Reese (Lived Experience Advisor), Sandra Collins (Lived Experience Advisor)
What happens when evaluation is not just informed by lived experience, but led by it?

This presentation offers a rare, practice-based account of a lived experience-led evaluation undertaken with the National Centre for Action on Child Sexual Abuse, where victim survivors worked as co-evaluators across all stages of the process. Established to centre victim survivors in awareness-raising, help-seeking, advocacy and best-practice responses, the Centre provided a powerful context to rethink how evaluation knowledge is produced, and by whom.

The session argues that lived experience-led evaluation is not an ethical “add-on”, but a fundamental shift in values, power and epistemology. Drawing on the evaluation findings, presenters will explore three core propositions.

First, nothing about us without us: moving from evaluation on people to evaluation led by people with lived experience reshapes evaluation questions, evidence, outcomes and definitions of rigour. Second, epistemic justice: lived experience leadership challenges entrenched assumptions about who gets to ask questions, whose knowledge counts, and how institutions respond to new forms of evidence. Third, beyond advice to synthesis: lived experience cannot simply “advise” evaluation, it must be integrated as a distinct way of knowing that transforms the whole evaluation.

Co-presented by lived experience evaluators and Day Four Projects evaluators, the session will combine reflective storytelling, concrete practice examples and facilitated dialogue. Participants will be invited to critically examine their own evaluative assumptions, engage in small-group reflection, and explore practical strategies for making space for multiple knowledge systems while maintaining evaluative integrity and meeting institutional requirements.This session will be particularly valuable for evaluators, commissioners, researchers and practitioners seeking more just, credible and impactful approaches to lived-experience evaluation in complex and sensitive contexts.

Authors: Andrew Boyle
Development programs often focus on whether interventions achieve intended outcomes, yet comparatively little attention is given to how the problems those interventions seek to address are defined. The way a problem is represented shapes which interventions are considered possible, influencing theories of change, program design, and the evaluation questions that follow.

Authors: Ian Falk (Mission Australia), Paul Royce (Mission Australia)

Evaluation can often be treated as a technical process, shaped by existing evaluative ‘types’, such as formative, summative, realist evaluation among others, and often focused on program performance and measurable outcomes. In complex, place-based contexts such as youth homelessness in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), however, evaluation needs to be much more than this – it becomes a contested and adaptive practice shaped by existing evidence, culture, geography and structural constraint.
This paper presents emerging results from a layered multisite, multimethod evaluative scoping study examining the accommodation needs of young people aged 8–24 who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, where First Nations young people comprise around 90% of those impacted. The place-based, First Nations-led consultation process functioned as a responsive, continually adjusted evaluative design. Rather than applying a single evaluation lens, the project adopted a layered evaluation model integrating the evidence base, relational consultation, iterative and adaptive methodological design, program case study analysis, and system-level mapping. Methods included multi-media narrative engagement in remote communities, semi-structured interviews with urban stakeholders, and for both urban and regional/remote sites, iterative reflection on emerging methodologies and insights.
This approach revealed that accommodation pathways are shaped less by individual behaviour than by structural misalignment between Western housing systems and young people’s lived realities, including kinship, mobility and connection to Country. In addition, the project established evidence-based criteria for ‘successful’ programs and services, which informed the program and service mapping process. In terms of the evaluation methodology, the paper found that layered and iterative place-based evaluation provides a more practical, useful and credible framework for understanding youth homelessness in complex, diverse and remote settings, enabling evaluation to move beyond judgement toward explanation, learning and culturally grounded, co-designed place-based system design.

Author: Doyen Radcliffe, Bajja Yungayimanha Collaboration
Indigenous-led systems change often begins with shifts in cultural authority, relationships, trust and institutional behaviour—long before formal outcomes or policy reform become visible. Yet many evaluation approaches continue to prioritise measurable outputs and short-term results, overlooking the relational, cultural and ethical foundations that drive meaningful change. This creates a gap between what First Nations communities experience as impact and what institutions recognise as evidence.

This presentation introduces the Danjoo Koorliny Five-Dimensional Indigenous Influence Model, developed through the Aboriginal-led impact evaluation of the Danjoo Koorliny movement in Western Australia. The model offers a practical and culturally grounded way to measure systems change by identifying and assessing influence across cultural, relational, behavioural, structural and transformational domains. Central to this work is a decolonising evaluation process that repositions cultural authority, Country and relational accountability as the foundation of ethical and rigorous evaluation. For First Nations evaluation, this means privileging Elder governance, community decision-making, Indigenous Data Sovereignty and culturally grounded methods such as yarning, storywork and outcome harvesting. For evaluation more broadly, it expands how evidence, value and impact are understood in complex systems and supports earlier identification of meaningful change.

The session will highlight three key messages. First, influence is the primary mechanism and measurable pathway of Indigenous-led systems change. Second, decolonising evaluation strengthens methodological rigour by integrating Indigenous and Western approaches rather than positioning them in opposition. Third, valuing place, relationships and cultural integrity improves the relevance, integrity and usefulness of evaluation for communities, policymakers and funders.

The presentation will combine short input, reflective discussion and interactive activities. Participants will explore practical tools, apply the framework to their own contexts, and reflect on how measuring influence can strengthen systems thinking and evaluation practice across diverse sectors.

Authors: David Stuart (Creative Australia)
Strategies are everywhere involving all sorts of topics and all kinds of goals, actions and stakeholders.  Strategy defines important goals and outlines how an organisation's activities will meet those goals. You would think that strategy and evaluation were great friends. But why is strategy evaluation so low profile in evaluation literature, and so hard to pull off? This paper reflects on several attempts at strategy-based evaluation and the lessons for fruitful strategy evaluation including the role for evaluators and evaluation in supporting strong strategy design and success.​​​​

Why you should leave evaluation (and come back!)
Author: Delyth Lloyd, Australian Centre for Evaluation
After 15 years as an AES member, I stepped away from evaluation for a one-year hiatus. What began as a brief stint in an implementation role quickly transitioned into a fast and furious year using every evaluation skill I had to offer. I negotiated in hard spaces, navigated power dynamics, held space for diversity and ethical complexities. Busy people asked for more rubrics and used them in practice! This presentation distils insights from my transition out of, and back into, the sector. It reflects on the evaluation competencies we hold, and highlights how deeply they are valued by others.

The Evaluation Pub Test: Simple Questions for Public Value 
Author: Amanda Taylor-Short, ARTD
Publicly funded evaluations carry an implicit responsibility to contribute to public good. In practice, evaluations are often viewed as mechanisms for accountability in government decision‑making. This can reinforce a focus on compliance, program‑specific detail, and predefined questions, limiting broader reflection about the contribution of a program and leaving simple but important questions unexplored. This creates a missed opportunity to connect evaluation work with the people and decisions it exists to inform. This presentation explores the Evaluation Pub Test: examining evaluator responsibility to support public value, the benefits of answering simple questions, and considerations for deciding which questions are worth answering.

From scientist to evaluator: Lessons beyond numbers 
Author: Heather Bryan, First Person Consulting
This Ignite traces one evaluator’s unlikely journey from a postgraduate ecologist in Latin America to an honours student modelling climate impacts, and later a data analyst at the Australian Bureau of Statistics - before arriving at the unexpected doorstep of evaluation. Along the way came a new appreciation for the value of qualitative evidence. This talk shares three lessons motivated by moving beyond numbers: outliers are insights rather than errors, stories explain what numbers can’t, and subjectivity, when acknowledged rather than ignored, can strengthen evaluation. Together, these lessons invite a broader view of evidence, where individual stories bring meaning.

Bridging Sectors Through Evaluation: Lessons from a University–Community, Community of Practice
Author: Hannah Morgan, UTS
In 2025, the University of Technology Sydney partnered with Inner Sydney Voice (ISV) to co-design an Evaluation Community of Practice, connecting university evaluators and community practitioners. We reflect on lessons learned from the collaboration, including the value of shared ownership and relational trust in cross-sector work. Community practitioners strengthened their confidence and capability, while UTS deepened its understanding of how to adapt evaluation capacity building to meet the needs of the community sector context. The experience illustrated the mutual benefits of collaboration and the potential of Communities of Practice to advance evaluation through reciprocal learning.

Seeing through their eyes: Photo-Elicitation in Evaluation
Author: Estelle Gaillard, CSIRO
Images can ignite conversation, evoke emotions, elicit reflection and spark new ways of thinking. Photo-elicitation uses photographs in interviews to prompt participants to share insights into their lived experiences that might not surface through standard questions. This Ignite presentation will introduce the method, show practical examples of its use in evaluation and outline the photo-elicitation process. Attendees will leave reflecting on whether — and how — photo-elicitation could fit into their own evaluation toolkit.

Making Space for Boba and Beats: Valuing Grassroots Reality with an Evaluation MVP
Author: Anabelle (pin-chu) Chen, Taiwan Pride
For a volunteer-run grassroots NFP, traditional evaluation often occupies the very space intended for community action. When resources are scarce, every hour spent on data collection undermines the operational realities of the place where we operate. As the President and Evaluator of Taiwan Pride Sydney, I faced this tension at the 2026 Sydney Mardi Gras. How do you measure the cultural impact of a 'Lanterns of Ecstatica, Taiwan Lighting up Asia' float when the generator dies, the music cuts out, and you are forced to march giant illuminated bubble tea cups in total silence?
This Ignite presentation proposes a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for evaluation. By shifting the focus to macro-validation and systemic consequences, I will demonstrate how grassroots organisations can engineer a structurally sound evidentiary argument that survives real-world disaster. Using aggressive dimensionality reduction and cognitive anchoring, we can design evaluation MVPs that extract maximum validated learning with minimum administrative friction. Let's spill the tea on how to make space for rigorous evaluation when absolutely nothing goes to plan.

Making Space, Valuing Place: The 21st Century Evaluation Paradigms Challenge
Bagele Chilisa (Botswana), Professor of the Post Graduate Research and Evaluation Programme, University of Botswana

Evaluation systems are under pressure to deliver credible evidence that strengthens decisions, responds to place and context, and envisions the future. This talk invites us to improve policy effectiveness by bringing established Western evaluation approaches into dialogue with other knowledge systems, including place  and space based paradigms of formerly colonised Peoples of the world. Paradigms help navigate dialogue on power distribution and how to amplify power for communities, address relationships and rights of Indigenous Peoples to their land and culture and navigate the complexity of context.

The People, Environment, Place, Space, and Time (PEPST) framework, derived from an Indigenous Science paradigm, is presented as a practical tool to enrich evaluation design and use. PEPST challenges decision makers to contextualise evaluation and check whether commissioning, governance, timelines, and success metrics narrow what counts as evidence. PEPST strengthens policy intelligence by centring Indigenous authority, while acknowledging institutional requirements.

This talk explores what changes when PEPST informs how evaluations are commissioned, governed, and used across development programs. It shows how the PEPST framework might connect traditional and new ways of evaluation, strengthen ethics and integrity in evidence making, and build durable bridges between Indigenous knowledge systems and multiple accountability requirements in evaluations.

Authors: Simon Alaba, ARTD Consultants, Rachel Aston, ARTD, Brad Astbury, University of Melbourne
Primary prevention programs targeting boys and young men at risk of using violence operate in a space where the evidence base is still developing, and knowing what works, for whom, and in what circumstances, is far from settled.

This presentation draws on 3 years of developmental evaluation of a primary prevention pilot to share three interconnected findings at the intersection of evaluation practice and implementation science.

First, we present evidence that participant and program alignment is among the most influential contextual factors shaping outcomes – a finding with direct implications for how programs like this should be targeted and resourced.

Second, we discuss how a significant program design shift, from targeting harmful gender norms directly to exploring participants' own values as an entry point, improved engagement and created the conditions for more meaningful reflection on masculinity and behaviour.

Third, we explore the adaptation dilemma: when evaluation signals resistance from participants, how should program designers respond?

Drawing on findings across multiple pilot phases, we discuss the tension between adapting to improve engagement and holding firm on program fidelity when discomfort is itself part of the change process. We close by examining what these findings mean for how evaluators interpret and communicate success in primary prevention settings, where uniform outcomes are neither expected nor realistic, and where the most meaningful impacts may be concentrated among a subset of participants.

Attendees will leave with practical insights applicable to developmental evaluation, pilot program design, and the evaluation of complex social programs more broadly. The session will close with audience discussion that invites participants to reflect on how these findings apply to their own evaluation contexts.

Authors: Jill Juliane Wai, Vanuatu Australia Education Support Program, Fremden Yanhambath, Vanuatu Australia Education Support Program, Ellis Silas, Vanuatu Skills Partnership

Authors: Elisabeth Jackson (Centre For Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University), Thushara Dibley Centre For Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University, Shane D'Angelo Centre For Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University)

This roundtable explores MEL as a practice that can challenge existing power structures and strengthen community voices. It aims to promote sharing and learning between evaluators in domestic and international contexts and build new connections between evaluators who share similar approaches and principles.

Across diverse approaches such as culturally responsive and Indigenous evaluation, realist approaches, and place-based methods, practitioners are asking: whose worldview shapes what counts as evidence? While the language used in different sectors varies, there are strong common threads: centring marginalised voices, working collaboratively, reflecting on our own assumptions, and valuing local knowledge.

This session is designed for intermediate to advanced evaluators who are thinking critically about power, partnership, and the politics of evidence. Participants will explore what is common across approaches in domestic and international contexts and how these are creating space for different worldviews and supporting forms of evidence that are meaningful to communities.

After a short framing and brief examples, participants will move into structured small-group discussions to surface shared tensions and practical insights. Prompts will include: What is one way your current evaluation practice may reinforce existing power dynamics? Where have you seen MEL genuinely shift decision-making power? What institutional constraints limit these approaches? Groups will then report back in a facilitated plenary. Participants will be invited to identify one insight they will take back into their own practice and one structural barrier the evaluation field needs to address collectively. Key insights will be shared more broadly through a blog developed after the conference.

The roundtable aligns with the aes26 sub-themes Traditional and New Ways and Ethics and Integrity, inviting participants to reflect on their real-world experience of applying participatory and culturally grounded approaches in different contexts and exploring how these can help disrupt existing power relations.

Authors: Alan Woodward, Alan Woodward Consulting, Leanne Kelly, Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University
Evaluations of community-based and place-based programs regularly require methods capable of examining context, relationships, and emergent outcomes. While case studies are a long-standing qualitative research approach, they are often under-utilized or misunderstood within evaluation practice. Drawing on the evaluation of Australian Red Cross’ Community Resilience Teams as an applied example, the presentation demonstrates how case study design enabled exploration of contextual dynamics, stakeholder perspectives, and underlying mechanisms that would not have been visible through survey or indicator-driven approaches alone. Participants will be offered practical guidance on when case studies are suitable and considerations for conducting case study activities.

Authors: Anna Rasalingam (Attorney-General’s Department), Daniel Maher (Attorney-General’s Department)
This presentation will demonstrate an example of an internal government evaluation team working with First Nations communities in both traditional and new ways.
It will cover the experience of a First Nations-led evaluation team evaluating a Federal Government program, actively overlaying culturally appropriate evaluation methods as they come up against historic government policies and commissioning practices. It will highlight these systemic barriers, our efforts to navigate these barriers to ensure First Nations voices are not only included but central.
From our experiences at the last AES conference, there was a re-occurring theme from fellow evaluators on working with First Nations communities with integrity. This presentation will provide an example of working with and centring First Nations voices.
Utilising the theme of “Walking in Two Worlds”, the presentation will explore dichotomies of traditional and new ways of evaluation within the public sector. Key points will include:

• Historical colonial barriers of commissioning, designing and implementing evaluations impacting First Nations peoples.
• Challenges of designing culturally responsive evaluations within this colonial paradigm.
• Centring First Nations voices, lived experiences, wisdom and perspectives.

The Big Room format would provide flexibility to facilitate culturally appropriate engagement and discussion, including impactful multi-media presentation and in-person discussions.
The presentation will include multiple perspectives of ACCOs engaged in the evaluation as well as the evaluation team.
The presentation will engage participants through inviting shared experiences tackling these barriers and challenges in their work.

Authors: Danielle Thornton, The Social Research Centre, Stephen Cuttriss, The Social Research Centre
The concept of value is at the heart of evaluation, yet conventional approaches to assessing value tend to focus on effectiveness, utility or efficiency as defined by commissioning agencies and governments. Realist approaches can help push back against the insistence that programs meet narrowly conceived outcome metrics or return on investment but may still fail to capture the range of social benefits generated. The invisibility of these forms of value to policymakers and economists can lead to perverse outcomes: to the recommissioning of ‘effective’ programs of little obvious benefit to participants or the broader community, and the defunding of initiatives that may meet community needs but not policy agendas.

This disconnection, between the types of programs communities want and need, and the programs that get commissioned, feeds into cynicism and distrust of the political class and government as a whole, and left unchecked, risks weakening the social contract on which democratic governance rests.

In this context the concept of public value, that is the social value generated by governments when they act in the public interest, offers an alternative framework grounded in democratic values. Whether as a practical means of accounting for value where impact cannot be quantified, or as a form of evaluative practice which centres the lived experience of citizens, public value asks that we assess programs not only on the terms set by governments, but also the extent to which they contribute to our collective wellbeing.

Drawing on lessons from an evaluation of a program designed to promote respectful sexual relationships among young people, this paper explores the applicability of public value as a framework for accounting for a wider range of social impacts and a method for making an assessment not of ‘value for money’, but the benefits generated for and on behalf of the public.

Author: Adrian Field, Dovetail Consulting
Value for Investment (VfI) is an emerging evaluation system that is gaining increasing traction internationally. The system is intentionally mixed methods, interdisciplinary and collaborative.
It is this collaborative positioning of VfI that this presentation is focused. In VfI framing, value draws from multiple perspectives of what makes a programme, intervention or policy valuable. Therefore, understanding and capturing value requires a fundamentally collaborative mindset, one that reaches beyond existing data sources and reporting, to explore from many different perspectives what it is that fundamentally matters about the intervention that is the evaluation’s focus.

This presentation draws on learning and approaches in exploring value through participatory design techniques. It will draw on approaches developed and refined across a range of VfI evaluations, in the health, mental health, justice, urban development, transport and creative sectors.
The session will describe a range of facilitative techniques adopted to draw on different stakeholders perspectives on value, and the strengths that they offer for building robust, relevant and actionable evaluations.

Using a VfI lens allied with participatory design techniques, the presentation will explore how value can be brought to life across key evaluation questions, theories of change and value propositions, evaluative rubrics, and collaborative sense-making.

Session participants will gain a clear sense of the possibilities and potential for applying participatory approaches in VfI, and the strengths these offer for evaluation practice.

Authors: Ximena Avalos (Ian Potter Foundation), Caroline Henwood (Ian Potter Foundation), Sarah Neill (Paul Ramsay Foundation), Jen Lorains (Childrens Ground), Adriaan Wolvaardt (Minderoo) , David Stuart (Creative Australia)

Philanthropy and other funding organisations play a powerful but often under examined role in shaping how evaluation is designed, resourced, interpreted, and used. While there is much discussion on approaches, methods, tools and capability, there is less attention paid to how funding structures, commissioning practices, and organisational cultures in funding organisations enable – or constrain – meaningful learning.

This session offers a funding perspective on different ways organisations try to “make space” for evaluation to be useful, ethical, and context-responsive. Drawing on experience from grantmaking organisations working across sectors and geographies, the session explores funders who are trying to shift beyond compliance-driven evaluation toward approaches that value learning, adaptation, and multiple ways of knowing.

The panel discussion will examine common pressure points – such as timelines, misaligned reporting expectations, and one-way data practices – and reflect on how these are often unintentionally created by funders and what funders are doing to try and address this. Panellists will discuss practical shifts funders are considering or making, including rethinking evaluation questions, sharing power over evidence, and supporting evaluation as a relational and iterative practice rather than a transactional product.

Rather than prescribing a single “right” model, the session invites dialogue across roles in the evaluation ecosystem, asking: what does good evaluation look like when funders actively value place, context, and relationships—and what changes when philanthropy sees itself as a learner, not just a commissioner?

Author: Kizzy Gandy, Jacaranda Partners

Learning objective: Participants will be able to construct core and alternative hypotheses from a theory of change, design evidence tests to distinguish between them and make defensible causal claims.

Contribution analysis is now widely used in Australian evaluation practice, but many evaluators stop short of the next step: systematically testing whether something other than the program explains the observed outcomes. Process tracing does exactly this. It raises the rigour of causal claims not by collecting more data, but by being more deliberate about what the data needs to show — and what it would need to show if the alternative explanation were true instead.

This workshop uses a real evaluation of the Embrace Multicultural Mental Health Project as a case study. The Embrace evaluation combined contribution analysis and process tracing with a mixed-method design including a quasi-experimental quantitative survey and qualitative interviews. It produced a result that many evaluations encounter but few handle well: the quantitative analysis found the program had no detectable effect on key outcomes, yet qualitative evidence suggested it was working. Process tracing provided the analytical framework to distinguish between three plausible explanations — the program failed, the effects take time to materialise, or competing programs are producing the same outcomes.

Participants work through three structured exercises: translating a theory of change into core and alternative hypotheses; designing evidence tests that can distinguish between them; and applying evaluator judgement to weight mixed evidence and reach a defensible conclusion. Each exercise uses the Embrace case, with reflection prompts connecting the method to participants' own evaluations.

The workshop is aimed at intermediate to advanced evaluators working on complex programs.

Authors: Giulia Capuzzo NSW DCCEEW, Liam Downing, Transport NSW, Tess Gordon, PLACE
Evaluators increasingly face the challenge of conducting  evaluation in complex systems where diverse voices, shifting power dynamics and competing priorities shape both the process and products of evaluative work. This presentation shares practical insights from a Signs of Success (SoS) framework as applied in the NSW Department of Education. The framework is an adaptive impact measurement and reporting approach that foregrounds stakeholder engagement, transparency and shared ownership.

The session explores the cogeneration of concise sets of sequential outcome measures from full program theories with evaluators and program owners. We will demonstrate how this supported participatory evaluation practice by recognising stakeholder values and redistributing power in evidence generation. To support equity in program outcomes, the Signs of Success also surfaced enabling conditions, shifting conversations from sole attribution to the evaluand toward systemic responsibility.

We also found that strong relationships and ongoing skill‑building formed the foundations of the collaboration between evaluators and program owners. Building a strong evaluative culture was essential for conversations around prioritisation of resources as the program matured along its path of impact.

Our objective in this session is to demonstrate how evaluators can embed integrity, inclusion and accountability within system-level evaluation processes while supporting program improvement and public value. By fostering transparent decision making and adaptive processes, we will show how this approach created space for open dialogue about progress, uncertainty and failure where program owners felt confident using evidence to guide decisions, even at the highest levels of governance and accountability.

This session will appeal to intermediate and advanced evaluators who regularly work with leaders and decision makers. It aligns with the Roots and Routes theme by showcasing how evaluation can strengthen evaluative culture, improve communication with decisionmakers and ensure evaluation remains credible amid increasing complexity.

Author: Dimitria Gavalyugova, NSW Department of Education
Evaluators face a core dilemma: decision-makers typically expect a definitive measure of program impact, yet the designs capable of delivering one are rarely feasible for large-scale government programs. Quasi-experimental methods and administrative data are often the only tools available to quantify long-term outcomes, but the assumptions needed to establish causal impact cannot always be met – or tested – with available data. This mismatch has driven evaluations into a sub-optimal equilibrium where uncertainty is understated, even though addressing it could lead to better-informed decisions. This presentation explores how to reconcile the need for reporting actionable findings with what the evidence can support.

The session draws on systematic analysis of the 22 combined outcome and economic evaluations published in the NSW Treasury library. By mapping the confidence of causal language attributing outcomes to programs across report sections, the analysis identifies a persistent "within-document gap." In many cases, findings are treated as causal in executive summaries and recommendations, even when underlying methodologies note that they should be interpreted with caution. Scoring each estimation strategy against a risk-of-bias framework reveals observable misalignment between evaluations’ methodological constraints and the confidence of causal claims.

When causality is uncertain, the program effect that gets monetised in economic evaluations contains the true impact plus some degree of bias. Existing guidance addresses uncertainty around monetary parameters and discount rates, but not around estimated program impacts. In the absence of such guidance, the evidence shows that potentially biased estimates routinely enter cost-benefit analyses as true effects. Using an anonymised real-world example, the presentation demonstrates how even small levels of bias can alter benefit-cost ratios and funding recommendations.

The session invites participants to collectively explore practical solutions across four areas: leveraging available methods and data to strengthen evidence, turning limitations into guidance for future evaluation design, communicating uncertainty effectively, and modelling uncertain impacts within economic analyses.

Author: Carina Calzoni, AES Rob Sale, nous

The AES has been exploring its vision of “quality evaluation that makes a difference” through a strategic project - engaging members and examining evaluation theory and practice. This work has surfaced a central challenge: while the phrase is compelling, its meaning is complex, contested, and shaped by context.

This roundtable begins from that complexity—but does not seek to resolve it. Instead, it focuses on what comes next.
We will briefly share insights from the journey so far, including the multiple dimensions of “evaluation”, “quality”, and “making a difference”. These span tensions between evaluation as process, product, and profession; competing perspectives on quality (e.g. standards, utility, impact, values); and diverse understandings of use and influence across contexts and stakeholders.

The primary purpose of the session is to co-design how this conversation continues across the AES community. Participants will engage in facilitated small-group discussions to explore key questions: What does quality evaluation mean in your context? Who defines it? What does “making a difference” look like—and for whom? How should these conversations evolve as contexts, practice, and membership change?

Participants will then work together to identify practical ways to sustain and deepen engagement, such as ongoing communities of practice, publications, podcasts, or future conference formats. The session will capture and share these ideas to inform AES’s ongoing work.

Designed for intermediate to advanced evaluators, this roundtable creates space for collective reflection and future-oriented dialogue. By centring plurality and participation, it supports the AES vision by keeping the conversation alive—recognising that what constitutes “quality evaluation that makes a difference” must continue to evolve with the field.

Authors: Patricia Rogers, Footprint Evaluation Initiative, Emil Laurberg Morgensen, University of Southern Denmark
Theories of change are now commonly used to design initiatives, including projects, programs and policies, and to shape monitoring and evaluation.  But 40 years after first being showcased at an AES conference, these are often developed and used in ways that don’t fit what is needed, especially to support adaptation across different settings and in changing contexts.  This session will present common mistakes, what they are, why they matter, and examples of better strategies.  Participants will engage with exercises to identify issues, try out strategies and explore possible applications in their own work and in shaping organisational requirements and procedures.

Insight that Delivers: How Good Evaluation Shapes Better Policy and Practice
Selwyn Button, Commissioner, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stream, Australian Productivity Commission

Good evaluation does more than measure outcomes or meet accountability requirements — it helps shape better public policy and improve practice across government and community sectors. In a context of increasing complexity, constrained resources, and rising expectations, evaluation provides critical evidence to inform decision-making, strengthen services, and improve outcomes for communities.This keynote explores how evaluation can move beyond compliance to become a practical tool for learning, adaptation, and system improvement. Drawing on examples of formal and informal evaluation processes from the Productivity Commission, community-controlled health organisations, government departments and consulting experiences, the session will examine how evaluation helps organisations understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions.The keynote will also reflect on the realities faced by public servants and community organisations, including balancing evidence with operational pressures, engaging stakeholders meaningfully, and translating findings into action. Effective evaluation strengthens accountability, informs investment decisions, and supports more responsive, equitable, and impactful services.

Followed by: handover to the aes27 International Evaluation Conference, Brisbane, Australia

Author: Gerard Atkinson, Iris Ethics
Evaluation is typically applied to discrete policies and programs, yet organisations themselves require systematic assessment of whether they achieve their goals and align with their values. This presentation examines how evaluation practice can be adapted to assess an entire company, drawing on a case study from Iris Ethics where we designed and implemented an integrated company-level evaluation plan.

The objective is to demonstrate how evaluative thinking can bridge the fragmented approaches currently dominating corporate contexts. Here strategy evaluation focuses on financial/operational objectives, ESG operates as carved-out compliance, and program evaluation remains siloed. This matters because organisations exist within interconnected systems: programs, profitability, and stakeholder value cannot genuinely be disentangled, yet corporate evaluation practice rarely addresses them holistically.

The presentation makes three core arguments. First, whole-of-company evaluation requires integrated thinking across traditionally separate domains: financial performance, operational delivery, social impact, and stakeholder value, grounded in evaluation's systematic logic whilst incorporating corporate strategy, ESG frameworks, market research methodologies, and economic value-for-investment thinking. Second, evaluability must be embedded from the start: mission and vision statements developed with explicit monitoring and evaluation capability, avoiding vague aspirations that cannot be assessed. Third, evaluation must be integrated into operational platforms rather than existing as separate reporting exercises, making assessment continuous rather than episodic.

The presentation follows a case study structure using a start-up example: establishing why whole-of-company evaluation matters, presenting the step-by-step framework (including whole-of-company logic models), demonstrating how evaluation integrates with strategy, governance, financial management, and competitive positioning, and identifying transferable lessons. Building on methodologies developed for NFP and government sectors but adapted to incorporate profitability and commercial risk, it demonstrates evaluation's applicability beyond traditional boundaries.

It will comprise a structured Q&A and discussion on barriers to integrated company evaluation, and invites participants to identify how the profession can engage with this frontier of practice.

Authors: Nicholas Hill Place Australia, Eve Millar, Place Australia
The use of place-based initiatives (PBIs) to address complex and entrenched disadvantage is expanding across Australia. These initiatives typically go beyond the delivery of single programs and involve cross-sector partnerships that place communities at the centre of efforts to address local problems. While a growing number of initiatives are demonstrating impact, the diversity of approaches, frameworks, and indicators used contributes to a fragmented evidence base. Inconsistencies in how impact is conceptualised and reported limit opportunities for shared learning and present a barrier to the growth and sustainability of the place-based ecosystem.

PLACE Australia is working collaboratively with stakeholders across the ecosystem—including government, philanthropy, not-for-profits, and community organisations—to develop a shared impact framework with a set of flexible indicators that more consistently demonstrate the impact of PBIs, support ongoing learning, and strengthen the sector. As the framework moves from development to implementation, a number of practical challenges arise. These include how shared indicators can be applied flexibly across diverse initiatives, how to balance consistency with local adaptation, how frameworks can support learning rather than compliance, and how Indigenous knowledge and community voice can be embedded in practice.

This roundtable brings together evaluators and practitioners to explore these challenges and identify practical pathways for implementation. Through facilitated discussion, participants will share their practice insights on implementation opportunities, risk and design considerations. The discussion will inform the next phase of testing and implementation of the shared impact framework.

Participants will be invited to reflect on the following questions:

1.How can shared indicators be consistently applied across diverse place-based initiatives while remaining meaningful to local contexts?

2.How can shared impact approaches support learning and improvement without becoming compliance-driven reporting requirements?

3.What risks and opportunities should be considered when implementing shared impact approaches across the place-based ecosystem?

4.What is needed to support the implementation and uptake of the shared impact framework across the sector?

Authors: Anne Stephens, Ethos of Engagement, Jill Thomas
This presentation explores the design of a systemic Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system for counter-trafficking in persons (CTIP) in the ASEAN region. Developed in 2023, the system supports the adoption and implementation of three victim-centred and gender-sensitive guides for counter trafficking in persons, in use across ASEAN member states. The presentation focuses on how systemic, participatory approaches to evaluation design can enhance uptake of evaluation and the role of a well-designed framework to support the capacity of individuals to monitor and evaluate their work.  

The objective of this presentation is to present the process used to develop a simple to use M&E system within a complex setting; show the public facing guidance documents and tools used to support novice and highly skilled evaluators to use the system; and describe our challenges and learnings.

This presentation offers a timely and practice-grounded contribution to the evaluation field by demonstrating how evaluators can design for relevance, capacity development and impact in complex, real-world settings. It provides actionable insights for practitioners seeking to strengthen the value and use of evaluation in increasingly uncertain and contested environments.

Authors: Virgina Thomas, Bioeconomy Science Institute Maiangi Taiao, Stewart Graham, Bioeconomy Science Institute Maiangi Taiao, Helen Percy, Bioeconomy Science Institute Maiangi Taiao
A culture of impact, empowered by evaluation, encourages accountability and learning, supporting projects to focus on outcomes, demonstrate efficacy and make improvements.  Fostering such an environment promotes success, yet can be challenging to achieve, requiring leadership, communication, adaptability, capacity and capability building, and resources.

Our paper discusses the (co)creation of impact culture, and evaluation systems and tools, in the Bioeconomy Science Institute Maiangi Taiao, a new public research organisation created by merging four of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Crown Research Institutes (CRIs). Establishing an impact culture in this new organisation requires building bridges and blurring boundaries between the organisations and systems that have been merged.  

While the four CRIs all had systems and tools to plan for and evaluate impact, the approaches were unique to each organisation, as were their impact cultures. Since the merger, colleagues have collaborated to bring the previously separate systems and tools together into a new evaluation ecosystem.

In our paper we focus on creating a cohesive impact culture, empowered by evaluation, through i. inter-organisational dialogue, ii. building an enabling environment for evaluation that is adaptable to different needs and functions, and iii. disseminating evaluation tools and resources and promoting evaluative thinking across organisations through collegial networks.

Using our experience as a case study, we will inspire our audience to reconsider the impact and evaluation culture, systems and tools in their own organisations using real time polling (e.g., Mentimeter) to encourage reflection and participation.

We draw on the work of Blundo and Canto (2019) and Ferre (2025) on building an evaluative culture including: creating a system that is adaptable to the different needs and functions of the legacy organisations, fostering dialogue across and beyond the evaluation sector to include fields such as economics and social science, and building capacity, capability and resources for evaluation.

Authors: Bethany Hanson, Tafe NSW, Emily Gates, Boston University, Martina Donkers
Strap in for a provocative, contentious, and fun session. We’re putting a spin on the classic debate where two teams will go head-to-head to argue the topic: “Evaluation’s pluralism strengthens its external influence.”

On the affirmative side, a spirited case for why pluralism is evaluation’s superpower. Surely leaning into our intersections with disciplines like policy, research and economics expands our reach, relevance, and impact. Embracing pluralism helps evaluators speak multiple “languages,” build trust with diverse stakeholders, and positions evaluation as a boundary‑spanning connector capable of influencing decisions in complex systems. Think: more collaboration, more innovation, and more doors opening because evaluators can flex and adapt.

The negative team will challenge! Doesn’t boundless pluralism stretch evaluation too far, making our unique identity fuzzy and our professional standards harder to uphold? Aren’t we risking dilution of expertise and inconsistencies in practice? Won’t trying to be “everything to everyone” only confuse commissioners and undermine the credibility we’ve spent decades building? Without firmer boundaries, evaluation risks becoming a methodological buffet with no clear value proposition at all.

And then there’s you- our third speaker. A debate without rebuttal is like an evaluation report without findings—unthinkable! So, you’ll choose a side and with a team of fellow audience-members and debaters, craft a knockout final argument for our third speakers.

Will it be chaotic? Quite possibly. Could things get messy? Almost definitely. Will you have FOMO if you miss it? Without a doubt.

Featuring thought leaders Amy Gullickson, Martina Donkers, Matt Healey, George Argyrous, Kate McKegg and AES Fellow, Rick Cummings, this session promises to be the highlight of the conference. Who will be victorious? Let the 2026 (Mostly-Serious) Crowd-Sourced Debate begin!

Authors: John Guenther, Batchelor Institute, Nicole Tujague, Southern Cross University, Anthea Rutter, Honorary Research Fellow, Jeffery Adams, Eastern Institute of Technology
The editorial team of the Evaluation Journal of Australasia publishes a broad range of evaluation articles covering evaluation practice, theory, and application. One of the issues that regularly arises for reviewers and editors is the depth of thinking expressed in manuscripts. In most cases this concern could be addressed with more critical thinking, particularly in manuscripts that describe evaluation findings, or discuss elements of evaluation practice.

In this interactive session the editorial team will discuss how to write with a more critical approach. This may be of value, not just in writing for journal articles, but in reports, and in framing evaluation recommendations, developing theories of change, logic models and discussing evaluation implications.

We will first discuss what ‘critical thinking’ means from theoretical and practical perspectives, before providing some examples of how writing can be changed from being a largely uncritical and surface level description, towards a deeper critical approach that engages with theory, with existing literature and with logic, judgement and arguments aligned with evaluative thinking.

We will conclude the session with some practical examples that participants can work through together and discuss with the broader group. Our intent is to help evaluators and anyone who writes reports and articles to enrich their writing so that readers can draw conclusions based on evidence, argument, reasoning and logic, while at the same time ensuring clarity and easy reading.

When “What’s Right” is Contested: Ethical Reflexivity in Systemic Change
Emily Gates, Associate Professor of Evaluation, Boston College


Ethics in evaluation is often treated as a matter of personal values, organisational commitments, or compliance with professional guidelines. But in systemic change, ethics becomes an ongoing, relational practice that asks us to hold space for hard questions and disagreement about “what’s right.”

In this session, we’ll make space for diverse perspectives and value the contexts and communities in which evaluation happens. We’ll practice ethical reflexivity together using photos, comics, and other visual moments from real evaluation work to explore:

• How our roles change when we evaluate systems instead of programs, and how we decide what responsible involvement looks like.
• How we navigate values, perspectives, and power, while avoiding the reproduction of unjust dynamics.
• How to assess “success” when outcomes are emergent, contributions are multi directional, and interpretations differ.

At its heart, this session sharpens the questions we ask of ourselves and each other, strengthening the ethical reflexivity needed to act with integrity when “what’s right” is genuinely contested.

Followed by conference close