2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/7354I present brief status reports on three large observational projects that are designed to test our current understanding of the evolution of cataclysmic variables (CVs): The spectroscopic selection of new CVs in the Hamburg Quasar Survey, the search for pre-CVs based on Sloan colours and UK Schmidt/6dF multiobject spectroscopy, and the identification of CVs that descended from supersoft X-ray binaries using a HST/STIS far-ultraviolet spectroscopic survey.To appear in ``Compact Binaries in the Galaxy and Beyond'', RevMexAA, eds. G. Tovmassian, E. SionAstrophysicstext