A collaboration of like-minded organisations (full list below) is undertaking exploratory research to understand to what extent ‘everyday ethics’ challenges are experienced throughout the Australian evaluation profession.
Everyday ethics is a term we are tentatively coining to refer to the ethical behaviours and practices required in the grey, ambiguous spaces in evaluation that sit aside from human research ethics and as such are currently ill-defined. We would like to build a picture of what this concept of everyday ethics entails, and understand how frequently and to what severity everyday ethics challenges are experienced in the Australian evaluation profession. In the future we would like to build resources to support the Australian evaluation profession to navigate everyday ethics issues more confidently and effectively.
When we refer to the Australian evaluation profession we are inclusive of all individuals and organisations that may interface with evaluation, whether that be as evaluation specialists and practitioners; to people that procure, commission and manage the contracts for evaluation; to program areas subject to, participating in and undertaking evaluation activities; to stakeholders of and participants in evaluations.
This topic was borne out of a panel discussion at the Australian Evaluation Society conference held in Naarm, Melbourne, in September 2024. Panellists polled the audience informally, and were surprised at the results of that quick poll, which showed (n=71):
* most respondents in the audience (55%) experienced an ethical issue in their work between 1 to 5 times last year
* 23% experienced these issues between 6 to 10 times last year
* 10% experienced these issues between 11 to 20 times last year
* concerningly, 6% experienced these issues more than 20 times last year
* while 7% never experienced these issues across last year.
We would like your help in building the base of knowledge on this topic of everyday ethics by completing this 20-30 minute survey. The survey will close at the end of May 2025.
The survey seeks to capture insights from across the Australian evaluation profession with regard to how often and how severely everyday ethics challenges are experienced, and wisdom from survey respondents as to how they mitigate and resolve these challenges. We would like to contain the results of this survey in a journal article to be submitted and published throughout 2025, as well as present the results at the Australian Evaluation Society conference to be held in Canberra during September 2025.
All data provided by you in completing this survey will remain confidential, and will only be reported in anonymised, aggregated themes. Where we choose to use particularly insightful quotes these will be anonymous and any information that is or could be potentially attributable to an individual or organisation will be removed.
The organisations collaborating on this research are:
* Grosvenor - a boutique, specialist evaluation consultancy with over 80 years of combined evaluation experience working across Australia's eastern seaboard
* the Australian Centre for Evaluation - the Commonwealth Government's function to put evaluation evidence at the heart of policy design and decision-making
* the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare’s Outcomes Practice Evidence Network (OPEN) - a network supporting community and social services organisations to build their evaluation capability
* the Paul Ramsay Foundation - one of Australia's leading philanthropic organisations, committed to the use of good evidence in its work
* the University of Melbourne's Assessment and Evaluation Research Centre (AERC) - delivery body of the Master of Evaluation, comprised of some of Australia's leading evaluators and researchers into evaluation.
