Reporting Lines of Inquiry: Documenting Evaluations and Making Values Explicit

The Program Evaluation Standards call for “rigorous documentation of evaluations” and emphasize evaluators’ responsibility to make explicit the key values that shape evaluations. Clear, complete, values-attentive evaluation reporting is necessary so constituents can understand, learn from, critique, improve, and take action based on evaluations. Yet, scholars have documented gaps in reporting that can limit understanding of evaluations. In this practice note, we provide guidance for reporting a central, value-laden component of evaluations: lines of inquiry. An evaluative line of inquiry is a linked set of an evaluation question, associated criteria or constructs/variables, data collection or analysis method(s), findings, and evaluative conclusion(s) that addresses a specific dimension of quality. We draw on a recent empirical analysis to outline the elements evaluators should include when reporting lines of inquiry and share exemplars that illustrate ways to communicate the links among these elements. We offer this guidance to assist evaluators in documenting their evaluations and making key values explicit to ensure meaningful understanding of evaluations.