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Development organisations need to know how effective their efforts have been. But who should make these judgements, and on what basis? Usually it is outside experts who take charge. Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is a different approach which involves local people, development agencies, and policy makers deciding together how progress should be measured, and results acted upon. It can reveal valuable lessons and improve accountability. However, it is a challenging process for...

If development means good change, questions arise about what is good, and what sorts of change matter. Answers can be personally defined and redefined. The changing words, meanings and concepts of development discourse both reflect and influence what is done. The realities of the powerful tend to dominate. Drawing on experience with participatory approaches and methods which enable poor and marginalized people to express their realities, responsible well-being is proposed as a central...

In this sequel to "Rural Development: Putting the last first" Robert Chambers argues that central issues in development have been overlooked, and that many past errors have flowed from domination by those with power.Development professionals now need new approaches and methods forinteracting, learning and knowing. Through analyzing experience - of past mistakes and myths, and of the continuing methodological revolution of PRA (participatory rural appraisal) - the author points towards...

PRA five years later: where are we now?

An after-action review (AAR) is a professional discussion of an event, focused on performance standards, that enables soldiers to discover for themselves what happened, why it happened, and how to sustain strengths and improve on weaknesses. It is a tool leaders and units can use to get maximum benefit from every mission or task. It provides- • Candid insights into specific soldier, leader, and unit strengths and weaknesses from various perspectives. • Feedback and insight critical to...

The old adage “if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail” can also apply to language. If our language is linear and static, we will tend to view and interact with our world as if it were linear and static. Taking a complex, dynamic, and circular world and linearizing it into a set of snapshots may make things seem simpler, but we may totally misread the very reality we were seeking to understand. Making such inappropriate simplifications “is like putting on...

his guide from the US General Accounting Office outlines good practice in case study evaluation and establishes a set of principles for applying case studies to evaluations. The paper outlines new ways of thinking about case studies and examines the methodology necessary to get the best from a case study analysis.

The theme of learning from experience as a means of improving the effectiveness of rural development projects and programmers has been common in recent years. Considerable effort has been put into refining, monitoring and evaluation systems to enhance organizational learning processes. However, an emphasis on normative approaches to evaluation and learning from experience has led to the neglect of research into the actual processes by which rural development agencies utilize experience. The...

"Weapons of the Weak" challenges conventional understandings of peasant resistance by focusing on the subtle, often overlooked ways that peasants resist domination. Rather than focusing on dramatic uprisings, Scott examines the everyday acts of resistance that occur in the shadows of power. Key Arguments Resistance is not always visible: Scott argues that resistance is not limited to organized rebellions. Everyday acts like foot-dragging, gossip, feigned ignorance, and petty theft can be...

Developed by Practical Concepts Inc. in 1979. Key document in the development of the logical model/framework

designed to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and promote scholarship, this TIG is a division of the American Evaluation Association (AEA).

Appreciative Inquiry is an approach to organisational change which focuses on strengths rather than on weaknesses - quite different to many approaches to evaluation which focus on deficits and problems. "Appreciative Inquiry is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives “life” to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most...

A case study focuses on a particular unit - a person, a site, a project. It often uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data. Case studies can be particularly useful for understanding how different elements fit together and how different elements (implementation, context and other factors) have produced the observed impacts. There are different types of case studies, which can be used for different purposes in evaluation. The GAO (Government Accountability Office) has...

Causal Link Monitoring (CLM) integrates design and monitoring to support adaptive management of projects. CLM helps project planners and managers identify the processes that are required to achieve desired results, and then to observe whether those processes take place, and how. Result-producing processes specify the causal links between results in a logic model or results framework—in other words, the processes between results. CLM focuses on how specific individuals or organizations use...

Contribution Analysis is an approach for assessing causal questions and inferring causality in real-life program evaluations. It offers a step-by-step approach designed to help managers, researchers, and policymakers arrive at conclusions about the contribution their program has made (or is currently making) to particular outcomes. The essential value of contribution analysis is that it offers an approach designed to reduce uncertainty about the contribution the intervention is making to the...

Critical System Heuristics (CSH) provides a framework of questions about a program including what is (and what ought to be) its purpose and its source of legitimacy and who are (and who ought to be) its intended beneficiaries. CSH, as developed by Werner Ulrich and later elaborated upon in collaboration with Martin Reynolds, is an approach used to surface, elaborate, and critically consider boundary judgments, that is, the ways in which people/groups decide what is relevant to the system of...

Democratic Evaluation is an approach where the aim of the evaluation is to serve the whole community. This allows people to be informed of what others are doing and sees the evaluator as someone who brokers the process. It generally focuses on inclusive practices which foster participation and collaboration. However it is also used as a means of ensuring public accountability and transparency.

Developmental Evaluation (DE) is an evaluation approach that can assist social innovators develop social change initiatives in complex or uncertain environments. DE originators liken their approach to the role of research & development in the private sector product development process because it facilitates real-time, or close to real-time, feedback to program staff thus facilitating a continuous development loop. Michael Quinn Patton is careful to describe this approach as one choice that...