Date of Award

6-2026

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Evaluation

First Advisor

Michael Harnar, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Paul Ciccantell, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Donna Podems, Ph.D.

Abstract

Professional associations are recognized as key actors in promoting the development of the evaluation field across the globe. There has been exponential growth of Voluntary Organizations for the Professionalization of Evaluation (VOPEs) in the Global South in the past several decades in response to an evolving international aid agenda and a mobilized international evaluation field intent on supporting the development of national monitoring and evaluation systems and the professionalization of the field. VOPEs have featured as a central actor in the Global Evaluation Agenda, an initiative developed by the international community aimed to promote professionalization of the evaluation field as a means toward realizing the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

This study examines the professionalization of evaluation through the role of VOPEs in four heterogeneous country contexts: Brazil, Ghana, Indonesia, and Uganda. Using a comparative cross-case study design, the study sought to identify the nature of professionalization across diverse settings. Data were analyzed using dramaturgical coding (Saldaña, 2016) to identify how actors think about and pursue professionalization through objectives, tactics, conflicts, attitudes, emotions, and subtexts. Using categorical and thematic coding, common themes across the fourcountry sample were identified. Member checks, analytical memos, and peer debriefing supported the validity of the findings and conclusions.

The study found there are many commonalities characterizing the VOPE experience, including early formation and impetus, struggle with financial support, and approach to advancing evaluation practice through the capacity building of evaluators. Variation in the sample is found in the extent of their engagement with the international aid industry and the character of their relationship with government. VOPEs in Indonesia and Brazil are more independent, reflecting their larger economies and greater diversity of interest in evaluation across sectors, while VOPEs in Ghana and Uganda are more enmeshed within the aid industry and linked to their national governments.

Independence was identified as a key theme across the four-country heterogeneous sample, reflected at multiple levels, including practice, institution, and field. A second theme of weariness focused on uncertainty about a professionalization process and a questioning about what purpose evaluation should hold as a field of practice and the role an evaluator should play. A third theme emerging across the sample of four countries was a caution about the professionalization of the evaluation field, which included a concern for the potential cooption of evaluation as a knowledge profession in Bolsenaro’s Brazil to the commercialization of the evaluation field and a move away from principles of social justice in Indonesia.

These findings reveal three intersecting dynamics shaping evaluation professionalization which are reflected in various schools of thought within the sociology of professions literature. Through the professions lens, VOPEs pursue standards and formal association norms in aspiring toward closure and recognition. The expertise lens shows how evaluators and VOPEs negotiate authority through trust and alliances within their national context. The neo-institutional lens underscores tensions between the global and local, as epistemologies and practices in evaluation conflict. The study contributes to sociological theory by applying the professions, expertise and neo-institutionalism lenses to the global evaluation field and to VOPE dynamics, emphasizing that professionalization should be understood not as a linear and uniform pathway but as a plural and adaptive process that is context specific.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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