186: Examining the connection between evaluation theory and policy within the Canadian federal government.

Evaluation theories are intended to guide evaluation practice, but are not easily transferred into evaluation practice. This may be attributed to the fact that evaluation theories are meant to apply across a broad range of contexts and may not be as relevant to specific practice settings. It is when policymakers adapt evaluation theories into evaluation policy by situating them within a specific organizational, political, and cultural context that theory is integrated into practice. This research explores the theory-policy-practice connection within the Canadian federal government by mapping the six evaluations policies implemented since 1977 to the ten evaluation policy components identified by Al Hudib and Cousins (2022). The analysis also considers the latent content of the evaluation policies, which provides an opportunity to identify and understand the various evaluation theories that were likely espoused by policymakers over the last five decades and corroborated by guidance documents for the federal evaluation function.