The American Evaluation Association is a professional evaluation organization founded in 1986 after merging two former evaluation bodies. This association is committed to exploring various evaluation programs like crime and justice and environmental evaluation programs. Research shows that as of 2014, the American Evaluation Association had over seven thousand members countrywide, ranging from practitioners to students (Frey, 2018). The association enables members from diverse career fields to connect. The American Evaluation Association's guiding principles are to improve the state of evaluation tools and systems, increase the use of evaluation programs, therefore promote it as a profession, and support evaluation processes in human theoretical frameworks.
Some of the American Evaluation Society programs focus on the evaluation of family and marriage matters, especially where children are concerned. For instance, an outcome evaluation program was conducted on a family court who suffer from drug and substance abuse. The mission of that program was to provide integrated drug and substance abuse community service to the locality (Frey, 2018). Various data collection and analysis methods were used to determine the course of action taken by child welfare programs. The programs also assessed and compared the relationship between parents, children, and the family support they offer each other. Also, these programs can be used to evaluate and understand family problems with the aim of working towards family recovery.
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The complexity and diversity of the American Evaluation Society programs create room for almost everyone with a career to join. International agencies and organizations like USAID have attended several evaluation missions that make it globally recognized (Frey, 2018). The association gives an opportunity and provides guidance to students who are aspiring professionals in their respective careers by giving them a wide pool of programs to choose from. Furthermore, joining the association as a student gives you time to assess specific programs that one is interested in without the pressure of working to build your career. Working with people from various professions gives you an insight into how things are run in other sectors and what can be done to improve them. Another example of a family evaluation program is the 30-Days to family intervention whose main aim is to place more children in the foster care system with their family and ensure the child's environment provides stability (Atkinson, 2017). The program's model encompasses two main elements: reconnecting families and providing necessary support within the unit.
Finally, the American Evaluation Association is an organization whose main goal is to improve systems through various evaluation processes and programs. The association was founded over three decades ago after merging its two predecessors, the Evaluation Network and the Evaluation Research Society. In addition, the association has approximately fifty sub-groups to tackle different evaluation programs across many fields (Frey, 2018). The American Evaluation Society has guiding principles that demand competence, unbiased respect from people, systemic inquiry, honesty, and integrity. In family and marriage matters, evaluation programs have been used to identify and understand existing problems that would help in deriving an appropriate long-term solution (Frey, 2018). Since the membership of joining the American Evaluation Association is open to most people, joining the organization gives you the necessary exposure and experience as you interact with others from different career fields.
References
Frey, B. (2018). The SAGE encyclopedia of educational research, measurement, and evaluation (Vols. 1-4). Thousand Oaks,, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781506326139
Atkinson, A. (2017). 30 Days to Family® Theory of Change Testing: Comprehensive Report . American Evaluation Association. https://comm.eval.org/viewdocument/30-days-to-family-theory-of-change
