Your search
Results 311 resources
-
We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five common pitfalls that organisations fall into when using theory of change, and walks through five rules of thumb that will help organisations to use the approach to tackle complex problems. We think that, applied well, theory of change can support charities and funders to take a systemic approach to their work. This report identifies five...
-
Positive deviance is a growing approach in international development that identifies those within a population who are outperforming their peers in some way, eg, children in low-income families who are well nourished when those around them are not. Analysing and then disseminating the behaviours and other factors underpinning positive deviance are demonstrably effective in delivering development results. However, positive deviance faces a number of challenges that are restricting its...
-
This report explains how public organizations can combine big data and thick data to transform public services delivery—a strategy called mixed analytics. Governments can greatly enhance the value of big data by combining it with “thick” data—rich qualitative information about users, such as their values, goals, and consumption behavior, obtained by observing or interacting with them in their daily lives. Big data holds great promise for improving public services delivery and innovation in...
-
Many rural poor and marginalized people strive to make a living in social-ecological systems that are characterized by multiple and often inequitable interactions across agents, scale and space. Uncertainty and inequality in such systems require research and development interventions to be adaptive, support learning and to engage with underlying drivers of poverty. Such complexity-aware approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluating development interventions are gaining strength, yet,...
-
The site provides news and information on AI events and learning opportunities in Australia and also provides an archive of articles and discussions centred on the use of AI.
-
Unexamined and unjustified assumptions are the Achilles’ heel of development programs. In this paper, we describe an evaluation capacity building (ECB) approach designed to help community development practitioners work more effectively with assumptions through the intentional infusion of evaluative thinking (ET) into the program planning, monitoring, and evaluation process. We focus specifically on one component of our ET promotion approach involving the creation and analysis of theory of...
-
Theory of change (ToC) is currently the approach for the evaluation and planning of international development programs. This approach is considered especially suitable for complex interventions. We question this assumption and argue that ToC’s focus on cause–effect logic and intended outcomes does not do justice to the recursive nature of complex interventions such as advocacy. Supported by our work as evaluators, and specifically our case study of an advocacy program on child rights, we...
-
In 2016, the Bureau of Policy, Planning and Learning (PPL) commissioned an internal stocktaking of USAID's mission-based MEL (Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning) Platforms.
-
About a decade ago, the development sector fell into the same trap the financial services industry did in the mid-1990s. We were all seduced by clever...
-
Building on experience from the CGIAR Research Program on Aquatic Agricultural Systems implemented by WorldFish in the Visayas and Mindanao regions of the Philippines, known as the VisMin Hub, we describe the development and evolution of a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system emerging from the facilitated action-reflection cycles of testing and adopting theories of change carried out with community partners through participatory action research (PAR). The former guides our community...
-
Andrea Babon and Lisa Denney explore how learning partners - a common feature of aid programs - can operate and feed into programs.
-
The Increasing Participation in Evaluation bulletin was developed by Anita Baker with Beth Bruner to help organizations integrate evaluative thinking into their organizational practice. This three page bulletin discusses how Organization Staff, Evaluators, and Funders are typically involved in participatory evaluation. The guide also defines the term "Ripple", and how to accomplish Ripple as well as examining what it looks like when Executive Leaders and Management Staff use Evaluative...
-
Although the decisions of policy professionals are often more consequential than those of individuals in their private capacity, there is a dearth of studies on the biases of policy professionals: those who prepare and implement policy on behalf of elected politicians. Experiments conducted on a novel subject pool of development policy professionals (public servants of the World Bank and the Department for International Development in the UK) show that policy professionals are indeed subject...
-
This paper captures lessons from recent experiences on using ‘theories of change’ amongst organisations involved in the research–policy interface. The literature in this area highlights much of the complexity inherent in the policymaking process, as well as the challenges around finding meaningful ways to measure research uptake. As a tool, ‘theories of change’ offers much, but the paper argues that the very complexity and dynamism of the research-to-policy process means that any theory of...
-
The practice of using rigorous scientific evaluations to study solutions to global poverty is relatively young. Although researchers continue to advance our knowledge of the mechanisms at work, confusion about their role and value persists. Having evidence from specific studies is fine and good, but for policy makers, the point is not simply to understand poverty, but to eliminate it. Do decisions always need to be informed by evidence from the local context? What potential and limits do...
Explore
Theme
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
- Action Inquiry/Collective Leadership (3)
- After Action Reviews (1)
- Appreciative Inquiry (4)
- Beneficiary Assessment/Engagement (2)
- Case Study (4)
- Causal Mechanisms (2)
- Circular charts applications (radar, pie, sunburst, spiderweb, orbic, etc) (2)
- Comparisons/Benchmarking (1)
- Contribution Analysis (2)
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (2)
- Cost-effectiveness analysis (1)
- Critical Systems Heuristics (3)
- Cross-sectional study (1)
- Data mining (1)
- Delphi Survey (1)
- Democratic Evaluation (1)
- Descriptive Statistics (1)
- Desk based research/lit review (2)
- Developmental Evaluation (11)
- Empowerment Evaluation (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (3)
- Evaluability assessment (5)
- Evaluating Multi-project programmes (4)
- Ex-post Evaluation (1)
- Feedback Systems (1)
- Focus Group Discussions (3)
- Impact evaluation (10)
- Impact Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation System (3)
- Indicator-based approaches (8)
- Innovation History (1)
- Innovation System Analysis (3)
- Institutional Histories (1)
- Knowledge Management (7)
- Logical Framework (9)
- Mapping Visualization Methods (8)
- MEL in International Development (7)
- Most Significant Change (2)
- Narrative Based Approaches (1)
- Network Analysis (2)
- Objectives and options analysis (1)
- Outcome Harvesting (10)
- Outcome Mapping (16)
- Participatory Action Research (7)
- Participatory Evaluation (9)
- Participatory Learning and Action - PLA (4)
- Participatory Rural Appraisal - PRA, RRA (2)
- Peers/Peer-Group Review (2)
- Policy Scientific Approach (2)
- Political Economy Analysis (11)
- Political Sentiment Analysis (PSA) (1)
- Portfolio Management (9)
- Positive Deviance (3)
- Principles-Focused Evaluation (1)
- Process Tracing (2)
- Public Management Theory (2)
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (7)
- Qualitative data analysis and grounded theory (2)
- Qualitative Impact Assessment Protocol (2)
- Quality Improvement (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (5)
- Realist Evaluation (5)
- Rigour (2)
- Rubrics (1)
- Rules of Thumb (1)
- Scenario Planning (5)
- SenseMaker (6)
- Social Media Metrics (1)
- Social Return on Investment (4)
- Stakeholder analysis (2)
- Stakeholder Feedback (3)
- Strategy testing (1)
- Success Case Method (3)
- Surveys (3)
- SWOT Analysis (1)
- Systemic Change (6)
- Systems Mapping (3)
- Theory-based evaluations (6)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (42)
- Trans-disciplinary Research (1)
- Utilisation focused evaluation (6)
- Value for Investment (2)
- Value for Money (5)
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
(80)
- Adaptive Learning (14)
- Adaptive Management (34)
- Adaptive Rigour (2)
- Agile & Lean approaches (3)
- CLA (Collaborating Learning Adapting) (6)
- Doing Development Differently (2)
- MSD - Market Systems Development (4)
- Other Adaptive approaches (3)
-
Other sectors
(1)
- Sport (1)
- Participation (1)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (1)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (5)
- Positive Deviance & 2 loops model (1)
- Results Based Management (2)
- Systems Thinking / Complexity (21)
- TWP (Thinking & Working Politically) (6)
- Cases (23)
- Courses (1)
- Development Actors Perspectives (24)
-
Geography
(13)
-
Africa
(7)
- Central Africa (1)
-
Eastern Africa
(2)
- Mozambique (1)
- Uganda (1)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
- West Africa (3)
-
Asia
(4)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
- China (1)
- South-eastern Asia (2)
-
Southern Asia
(1)
- Bangladesh (1)
-
Eastern Asia
(1)
-
Europe
(2)
-
Western Europe
(2)
- Germany (2)
-
Western Europe
(2)
-
Africa
(7)
- Networks and Communities of Practice (4)
-
Practical
(24)
- Tools (4)
-
Sectors [+]
(42)
- Advocacy and Activism (1)
- Alternative Development (6)
- Citizen Engagement (3)
- Combatting violent extremism (4)
- Economic development (3)
- Environmental Management (1)
- Fragile and Conflict Aflicted Settings (6)
- Gender (1)
- Governance and Accountability (4)
- Health (3)
- Humanitarian Aid (2)
- Innovation (in Development) (1)
- Institutional Capacity & Change (1)
- Knowledge to Practice (7)
- Locally driven development (1)
- NGOs (3)
- Organizational Change (1)
- Peace Building (1)
- Social Accountability (3)
- Waste Management (1)
Resource type
- Audio Recording (1)
- Blog Post (42)
- Book (24)
- Book Section (7)
- Conference Paper (1)
- Dataset (1)
- Document (11)
- Forum Post (1)
- Journal Article (47)
- Newspaper Article (1)
- Presentation (5)
- Report (152)
- Software (1)
- Thesis (1)
- Video Recording (5)
- Web Page (11)