Edinburgh Napier University

  The Action PROFEEDBACK aims to foster the networking of the policy evaluation community at EU-level, raise awareness on the importance of evaluation policy research and improve its impact on policy-making. The Platform, following a bottom-up and open approach, will gather researchers and professionals from various scientific fields and sectors to present and evaluate theories, topics, tools and methods of policy evaluation. Results of the Europe-wide assessment of good practices will provide direct and high-quality inputs for national and EU bodies responsible for policy evaluation.

Policy evaluation is a key tool in understanding, developing and modernising EU policies, thus there is a growing demand for EU-wide and high quality evaluation services. The main challenge is that currently there is no bottom-up platform for European researchers and professionals working in policy evaluation. They have limited possibilities to discuss common problems, assess country specific practices and share their knowledge in a mutually beneficial and effective way.

PROFEEDBACK aims to tackle this challenge with an innovative, complex, cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach by:

analysing the theoretical and methodological questions of evaluation policy research putting special focus on Cohesion Policy,
enriching scientific research of policy evaluation and addressing new challenges,
harmonizing fragmented approaches to set the research agenda and to get a common understanding,
contributing to the capacity building of the policy evaluation community,
involving national and EU policy-makers and the civil society to contribute to evidence-based policy-making,
framing a Code of Conduct for the policy evaluation community.