Please join us for our upcoming professional development meeting on Thursday April 17th, 12 - 1pm.
Exploring Autoethnography in Evaluation
Jacqueline Singh, PhD., MPP
Autoethnography is more than just telling a personal story—it’s a structured approach to understanding how lived experiences connect to broader cultural, institutional, and social contexts. As with front-end evaluation planning, autoethnography can encourage evaluators to question assumptions, surface unspoken narratives, and examine how context shapes meaning. Leaders in the field describe it as a method that uses deep self-reflection and personal narrative to analyze and critique cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences. Rather than aiming for detached objectivity, autoethnography acknowledges the researcher’s presence in the work, embracing subjectivity as a valuable tool for uncovering insights and new perspectives.
What does this mean for evaluation? Autoethnography presents an opportunity for evaluators—and potentially program participants—to reflect on how lived experience intersects with their work, offering a fresh lens for uncovering insights and strengthening connections within and beyond the communities they engage with. By integrating self-reflection into evaluative inquiry, autoethnography may offer evaluators a way to deepen meaning, context, and impact—expanding how we think about evidence, interpretation, and engagement in contemporary evaluation.
This interactive session will move beyond explanation to experience. Participants will engage with one evaluator’s journey of learning and discovery, using guided reflections and a real-world scenario to explore how autoethnographic approaches offer new ways to add depth and meaning to evaluation.
Focusing on showing rather than telling, this session invites participants to reflect, engage, and consider new ways of thinking about evaluation. Attendees will leave with a greater awareness of autoethnography, ideas for integrating self-reflection and narrative into evaluation practice, and a fresh perspective on how lived experience can inform methodological insight.
This professional development opportunity is provided at no cost to IEA members. Those who are members of an AEA affiliate will have the opportunity to join at no cost using a code that will be provided to local affiliate groups.
