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This book offers guidance on the principles, methods, and practice of impact evaluation. It contains material for a range of audiences, from those who may use or manage impact evaluations to applied researchers.
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In this blog we are sharing a digest of some of the many useful and innovative monitoring, evaluation and learning resources and efforts that have come through the M&E Sandbox in 2022. A lot of these resources have been shared by our community in response to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the launch of the Sandbox (please keep them coming!). We hope you find it useful. We have grouped these efforts and resources under six broad questions: - How do we measure systems...
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This guide provides an introductory overview of a range of methods that have been selected for their actual and potential use in the field of international development evaluation. For each method, a detailed guidance note presents the method’s main features and procedural steps, key advantages and disadvantages, as well as its applicability. Each guidance note includes references for relevant background readings (basic and advanced) as well as references to other additional resources of...
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Most people agree that monitoring and evaluation (M&E) should be used for both learning and accountability. However, there is no consensus about which one is more important. The debate matters as there is sometimes tension between the two purposes. In the past there has often been a disconnect between M&E and learning. Many M&E systems are primarily designed to enable accountability to donors.
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Calls for more ‘adaptive programming’ have been prominent in international development practice for over a decade. Learning-by-doing is a crucial element of this, but programmes have often found it challenging to become more learning oriented. Establishing some form of reflective practice, against countervailing incentives, is difficult. Incorporating data collection processes that generate useful, timely and practical information to inform these reflections is even more so.This paper...
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This chapter examines good practices in implementing effective Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems within complex international development Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) programs, which are characterized by challenges of non-linearity, limited evidence of theories of change, and contextual and politically contingent nature of outcomes. The chapter presents three cases of MEL systems in complex projects implemented by Pact across distinct and diverse operating...
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Research for development (R4D) funding is increasingly expected to demonstrate value for money (VfM). However, the dominance of positivist approaches to evaluating VfM, such as cost-benefit analysis, do not fully account for the complexity of R4D funds and risk undermining efforts to contribute to transformational development. This paper posits an alternative approach to evaluating VfM, using the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund as case studies. Based on a...
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Relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability are widely used evaluation criteria, particularly in international development co-operation. They help to determine the merit or worth of various interventions, such as strategies, policies, programmes or projects. This guidance aims to help evaluators and others to better understand those criteria, and improve their use. It starts by describing what they are, and how they are meant to be used. Then the definitions...
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In the CEDIL Methods brief, ‘Evaluating complex interventions: What are appropriate methods?’ we identify four types of complex development interventions: long causal chain interventions, multicomponent interventions, portfolio interventions, and system-level interventions. These interventions are characterised by multiple activities, multiple outcomes, multiple components, a high level of interconnectedness, and non-linear outcomes.
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This paper reviews promising methods for the evaluation of complex interventions that are new or have been used in a limited way. It offers a taxonomy of complex interventions in international development and draws on literature to discuss several methods that can be used to evaluate these interventions. Complex interventions are those that are characterised by multiple components, multiple stakeholders, or multiple target populations. They may also be interventions that incorporate...
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This landscape review on measuring and monitoring adaptive learning highlights the learning from five adaptive programming guidelines and toolkits and one implementation science framework to inform the monitoring and evaluation of adaptive learning. The introduction of adaptive learning processes and skillsets in global health programming is part of an emerging strategy to advance a learning culture within projects and teams to improve health program performance. The monitoring and...
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Evaluators who take a complexity-aware approach must consider tradeoffs related to theoretical parsimony, falsifiability, and measurement validity. These tradeoffs may be particularly pronounced with ex-post evaluation designs in which program theory development and monitoring frameworks are often completed before the evaluator is engaged. In this chapter, we argue that theory-based evaluation (TBE) approaches can address unique ex-post evaluation challenges that complexity-aware evaluation...
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Issues of power are not new to program evaluation. What is new is a consideration of how programming uses insights into incentives that shape and adapt implementation. How should one evaluate in a way that explicitly assesses the ways in which a program considers power? One of the innovative topics deriving from the democracy and governance space is the approach of thinking and working politically (TWP) which is seeing increased use in development programming. TWP suggests different mental...
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The M&E Universe is a free, online resource developed by INTRAC to support development practitioners involved in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It consists of a series of short papers (2-6 pages) on different subjects related to M&E. To begin exploring the Universe right away, use the button below. To find out more, read on.
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Background: Addressing today’s sustainability challenges requires adopting a systemic approach where social and ecological systems are treated as integrated social-ecological systems. Such systems are complex, and the international development sector increasingly recognises the need to account for the complexity of the systems that they seek to transform. Purpose: This paper sketches out the elements of a complexity-aware monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for international...
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When accountability is understood as reporting on pre-deined deliverables, it is often considered to be irreconcilable with learning. This conventional wisdom inhibits an appreciation of their connection. In this chapter, Irene Guijt exposes the laws and traps in reasoning that keep accountability and learning apart. She provides practitioners with principles and basic good ideas that open up prospects for accountability and learning to complement each other.
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NGO-IDEAs (NGO – Impact on Development, Empowerment and Actions) NGO-IDEAs is a cooperation of about 40 non-govermental organisations (NGOs) from South Asia, East Africa and the Philippines and 14 German NGOs working in the field of development cooperation. It identifies and develops jointly with all partners, concepts and tools for NGOs in the areas of Outcome and Impact Assessment and Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E). NGO-IDEAs is further being supported by VENRO, the umbrella organisation of...
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The logical framework approach has spread enormously, including increasingly to stages of review and evaluation. Yet it has had little systematic evaluation itself. Survey of available materials indicates several recurrent failings, some less easily countered than others. In particular: focus on achievement of intended effects by intended routes makes logframes a very limiting tool in evaluation; an assumption of consensual project objectives often becomes problematic in public and...
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How can we transform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) into a more adaptive, emergent process to address uncertainty and complexity in todays’ world? How do we move from compliance and accountability to learning – to support better, more timely, decisions? Join GEI Program Manager, Dugan Fraser, as he discusses these questions and others with Special Guest, Søren Haldrup, from UNDP's Strategic Innovation Unit where he manages UNDP's innovation facility and leads a new initiative called the M&E Sandbox.
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