Objectives

The growing need for evaluation is associated with many opportunities and also risks. These relate to the quality of evaluations on the one hand and the professionalism of evaluators on the other. For example, despite great interest in evaluation in large parts of the German-speaking world, the level of information about the possibilities and limitations, but also about the costs and benefits of evaluations is low. For this reason, DeGEval is strongly committed to

• promoting binding quality criteria for evaluation, which is reflected in the "Standards for Evaluation" and the "Supplements for Self-Evaluation" that follow on from this;
• to support high-quality training and further education courses that are based on the "Recommendations for training and further education in evaluation" published by DeGEval;
• to communicate the importance of high-quality evaluations to clients, evaluators and those whose performance and activities are evaluated;
• to make information about evaluation publicly accessible.

The central aim of DeGEval is to bring together different perspectives with regard to the theory and practice of evaluation. DeGEval has set itself the task of

• promoting the exchange between evaluators within individual evaluation fields and between evaluation fields, which is achieved in particular through the activities of the DeGEval working groups;
• bringing together the experiences and expectations of commissioning parties, evaluation researchers, evaluators and evaluated persons;
• maintaining and expanding contact with relevant national and international organizations in the field of evaluation.

The strong differentiation of evaluation requires a constant exchange of information and collegial discourse. DeGEval contributes to this by, among other things:

• organizing annual conferences that provide a platform for critical discussion of evaluation approaches, evaluation designs and methods;
• being involved in the Journal of Evaluation (Zeitschrift für Evaluation - ZfEv), which is a qualified discussion forum for evaluation;
• providing an information forum in the form of the DeGEval...Mail, which reports on evaluation activities and needs in various fields;
• supporting the forum-evaluation mailing list, which enables the continuous exchange of experience and offers the opportunity to discuss open questions from the field of evaluation.