Undertaking evaluation is a way of making public agencies more accountable. Due to the growing demand for accountability, effectiveness and value for money, globally there is an increasing emphasis on Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB) in public and nonprofit organizations. Although there is growing importance of ECB as a topic of study, there is little consensus among researchers about what constitutes Evaluation Capacity (EC) and how to conceptualize ECB. However, there is agreement among scholars that training is one of the most important strategies of ECB. The ECB literature is primarily focused on what constitutes EC and how to build it, but there has been a little effort to investigate the effectiveness of a particular strategy used for ECB. The present study is an attempt to understand the effectiveness of one ECB strategy, that is, training, in promoting professional evaluation practices such as baseline data collection and use of baseline data.

This study responds to the following research question: to what extent does training play role in promoting professional evaluation practices such as data collection and use of these data? Although staff training is viewed domestically as an important pre-requisite for most organizational change including ECB, there is little research that investigates its value as an essential component of ECB strategy in an international development context. We hypothesize that training is positively associated with advancing international evaluation practices. To approach this question, the Peace Corps’ 2012 Project Status Report (PSR) survey was analyzed. The data in this survey were collected from 184 projects of the Peace Corps operating in 72 countries. Analyses suggest that there is positive relationship between training, baseline data collection and use of these data.

The study is unique because no research about the importance of training and baseline data has ever been conducted in the context of the Peace Corps. These analyses will give insights into baseline data collection-related issues faced by the Peace Corps’ projects across the world and make recommendations to resolve those issues. The study is also useful because of its global scope. International development organizations such as United Stated Agency for International Development (USAID), World Bank, United Nation Development Program (UNDP) struggle to build EC to evaluate their programs in developing countries. These agencies can draw on this study to learn key lessons for their international projects.