The first SEVAL Standards were adopted in 2001. They were based on the Program Evaluation Standards presented by the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation and were adapted to the Swiss context by a SEVAL working group. These 27 standards were grouped according to the four quality criteria: utility, feasibility, propriety and accuracy.
From 2008 on, the working group ‘evaluation standards’ investigated the application and usefulness of the SEVAL standards in practice. Based on case studies, expert interviews and a survey of the SEVAL members, the standards were revised from 2013 to 2016. The new version builds on the substance of the previous standards, but transfers them into a new structure with three groups, each of which relates to different aspects of evaluation. The revised SEVAL Standards were approved by the general assembly on 8 September 2016.