I often chair or serve on committees of students conducting a program evaluation thesis or dissertation and am developing a framework to support faculty and students in this work. I introduced the framework in a presentation during the Graduate Student and New Evaluator business meeting at the 2015 American Evaluation Association conference in Chicago. The evolving framework includes six key points:

• Consider the evaluation problem
• Understand the program and program context
• Involve stakeholders
• Choose an evaluation approach
• Establish evaluation quality
• Get the evaluation used

The specifics of how to apply these when conducting a program evaluation thesis or dissertation study are available as resources on my website, Route One Evaluation. I welcome questions and feedback on the framework. My next blog post will focus on challenges and opportunities associated with program evaluation thesis and dissertation work.