It gives me great pleasure to introduce my last issue as Editor-in-Chief of CJPE. I feel that with this issue, I am going out with a nice splash.

Articles and practice notes in this issue of the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation cast light on the value of empirical work in advancing knowledge about evaluation practice. [...]

CJPE  31(1) is jam-packed with practical learning interspersed with research on evaluation that both enhances our academic understanding of evaluation and advances the practice of evaluation. [...]

Preparing the editor’s remarks for  CJPE  30(2) has brought a big smile to my soul. This issue is jam-packed with gems. Covering a wide range of hot and less hot topics, the issue has more than a little bit of something in it for all readers from the many corners of the evaluation community in Canada and abroad. [...]

Challenges to evaluating comprehensive complex strategies revolve around addressing comprehensiveness, attribution, and complexity. The latter requires attention to synergies amongst interventions, feedback loops, and other forms of nonlinearity. The article reviews and assesses how well six approaches to evaluating strategies succeed in dealing with these challenges, including one developed in light of the initial review. None of the approaches offer ideal solutions to the challenges of complexity. The quantified logic model approach suggests the need to simplify and refrain from trying to assess all causal chains in complex strategies. Intervention path contribution analysis, an approach under development, explores the possibilities of using contribution analysis to validate evaluative propositions developed from literature, program theory, and incomplete evaluative information. Greater understanding of synergies, feedback loops, and nonlinearity in general requires accumulation of knowledge over time from thoughtful strategy evaluations under a variety of contexts.