Your search
Results 201 resources
-
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...
-
This thesis applies ideational and institutional theories to analyse how two specific ideas, results and adaptation, have changed the theory and practice of development cooperation. The thesis addresses the question of why the results and adaptation ideas are often treated as binaries and how this debate has evolved historically. In a first theoretical paper, the evolution of results and adaptation is conceptualised as a combination of institutional layering and diffusion within development...
-
These Checklists for Exit along the Sustainability Project Cycle are based on lessons from ex-post evaluations that Valuing Voices has done or researched. Ex-post project completion evaluations are rare and even more so those that consulted partners and participants in the field about sustained impacts. Over $3.5 trillion has been spent on public foreign aid projects in the past 70 years (OECD 2019) yet we have evaluated less than 1% of these projects for sustainability. Our Valuing Voices...
-
The term After Action Review (AAR) is becoming more common in the world of development evaluation, particularly in programmes that focus on evaluation as a formative learning process. As structured and facilitated learning moments, AARs take many shapes always built to support a specific team in a specific moment on their journey. Across such a diversity of practice how do we understand the evolution of the AAR as a method with an action research orientation? Being mindful always of the...
-
For AC practitioners, systems mapping is essential but also difficult. To lessen obstacles, Peter Woodrow proposes a scaffolded approach. An Experiment in “Fast Forwarding” Drawing upon our near-decade work on corruption, we recently decided to try an experiment: we would present “common patterns” of corruption as tentative models to adapt and add to—rather than try to teach people to do systems mapping from scratch. In this teaching experiment, each common pattern would function as a kind...
-
This guide has been developed to help build confidence and capability, distilling useful tips and considerations that may help teams think through programme delivery issues and interpret elements of the PrOF Rules. This PrOF Guide lays out: - The definition of beneficiary engagement. - The case for beneficiary engagement. - FCDO’s approach to beneficiary engagement. - Practical tips for how to integrate beneficiary engagement throughout the programme cycle, including guiding questions to...
-
This is the second blog in our series ‘Lessons on using Contribution Analysis for impact evaluation’. In our first blog, we introduced Contribution Analysis (CA) as an overarching approach to theory-based evaluation and the idea of causal hotpots as a way to zoom in, unpack and make the hard choices of where to focus evaluation research. Identifying specific links in the theory of change (ToC) with specific evaluation questions enables you to then choose appropriate methods. We have applied...
-
Does the choice of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches and tools matter for adaptive programmes? In short, yes: monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) and adaptive management (AM) are intertwined. While programme monitoring data and evaluation results are not the only sources of evidence that programmes use for learning and iteration, they often are amongst most important ones — or at least they should be. Selecting what type of information to collect and analyse — and how — is...
-
Over the past decade, the field of development evaluation has seen a renewed interest in methodological approaches that can answer compelling causal questions about what works, for whom, and why. Development evaluators have notably started to experiment with Bayesian Process Tracing to unpack, test, and enhance their comprehension of causal mechanisms triggered by development interventions. This chapter conveys one such experience of applying Bayesian Process Tracing to the study of citizen...
-
As with all public policy work, education policies are demanding. Policy workers need to ‘know’ a lot—about the problems they are addressing, the people who need to be engaged, the promises they can make in response, the context they are working in, and the processes they will follow to implement. Most policy workers answer questions about such issues within the structures of plan and control processes used to devise budgets and projects. These structures limit their knowledge gathering,...
-
Research on empowerment and accountability tends to focus on collective action and its potential for empowering citizens undertaking the action and on achieving state accountability. In fragile, conflict and violence-affected settings (FCVAS) collective action is rare and risky. So how do citizens, particularly the chronically poor and most marginalised, interact and make claims on the different public authorities that exist in these settings, and how do these interactions contribute to...
-
USAID maintains staff and operations in more than 80 countries around the world, all of which the COVID-19 pandemic will disrupt. USAID remains committed to protecting the health and safety of our staff, while continuing appropriate oversight of our programs and ensuring the accountable and effective use of U.S. taxpayer funds. In the current operating environment, USAID and implementing partners face new challenges in implementing activities, monitoring progress, collecting data, and...
-
“Hacking by the prompt”—writing simple yet creative conversational instructions in ChatGPT's message window—revealed many valuable additions to the evaluator's toolbox for all stages of the evaluation process. This includes the production of terms of reference and proposals for the dissemination of final reports. ChatGPT does not come with an instruction book, so evaluators must experiment creatively to understand its potential. The surprising performance of ChatGPT leads to the question:...
-
Over the last decade, the peace sector has been developing and adapting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and tools to fit their contexts and ways of working. This evolution may hold some insights for the aid community in how to go beyond more traditional, backwards-looking M&E to navigate today’s volatile, interest-based world of politics and aid.
-
AI already is being used in some areas of process improvement, and the usage of this technology — including generative AI — promises to grow. That’s because it can perform tasks faster and much less expensively than humans alone. But it will never fully replace people — and that poses management challenges.
-
The complexity of issues addressed by research for development (R4D) requires collaborations between partners from a range of disciplines and cultural contexts. Power asymmetries within such partnerships may obstruct the fair distribution of resources, responsibilities and benefits across all partners. This paper presents a cross-case analysis of five R4D partnership evaluations, their methods and how they unearthed and addressed power asymmetries. It contributes to the field of R4D...
-
Collective leadership feels timely and important in an uncertain, fast changing, and challenging world. This report comes at this heightened moment of urgency and appetite for renewal, bringing potential to do things differently in public services and communities. The opportunities and challenges of true collaboration-in-practice, in the absence of blueprints, mean that it has never been more necessary to change ways of working and foreground learning. As outcomes remain important, and...
-
This Emerging Evidence Report shares evidence of how, for whom, and under what circumstances, Participatory Action Research (PAR) leads to innovative actions. A rapid realist review was undertaken to develop programme theories that explain how PAR generates innovation. The methodology included peer-reviewed and grey literature and moments of engagement with programme staff, such that their input supported the development and refinement of three resulting initial programme theories (IPTs)...
-
The world changes too much for anyone who is invested in social change work to imagine that this work is linear and predictable. Opportunities come and go, whether caused by a pandemic or political shifts. This much most social movement leaders and activists intuitively understand. But what can be done with this realization? How might movement groups better prepare for moments of opportunity? We want to explore how we can create the changes we want to see by responding to the changes that are outside our control.
Explore
Theme
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
- Action Inquiry/Collective Leadership (5)
- After Action Reviews (4)
- Artificial Intelligence (4)
- Beneficiary Assessment/Engagement (3)
- Capacity Development (2)
- Case Study (2)
- Causal Mechanisms (11)
- Circular charts applications (radar, pie, sunburst, spiderweb, orbic, etc) (3)
- Community Led MEL (2)
- Context Monitoring (1)
- Contribution Analysis (7)
- Cost-Benefit Analysis (1)
- Critical Friends (3)
- Critical Systems Heuristics (1)
- Desk based research/lit review (1)
- Diaries (1)
- Ethnography / Rapid Ethnography (1)
- Evaluability assessment (1)
- Evaluating Multi-project programmes (2)
- Ex-post Evaluation (4)
- Feedback Systems (4)
- Humour (1)
- Impact evaluation (5)
- Impact Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation System (2)
- Innovation System Analysis (1)
- Institutional Histories (1)
- Knowing Unknowns (1)
- Knowledge Management (3)
- Logical Framework (2)
- MEL Bricolage (2)
- MEL in International Development (24)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Narrative Based Approaches (1)
- Network Analysis (6)
- Outcome Harvesting (2)
- Outcome Mapping (5)
- Participatory Action Research (9)
- Participatory Evaluation (6)
- Participatory Learning and Action - PLA (3)
- Peers/Peer-Group Review (2)
- Political Economy Analysis (3)
- Portfolio Management (9)
- Positive Deviance (2)
- Post Project Evaluations (1)
- Power Analysis (1)
- Process Tracing (10)
- Qualitative Comparative Analysis (1)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (6)
- Realist Evaluation (5)
- Remote Monitoring (1)
- Rigour (3)
- Rubrics (14)
- Rules of Thumb (1)
- Scenario Planning (3)
- SenseMaker (3)
- Stakeholder analysis (1)
- Strategy testing (1)
- Surveys (1)
- Sustainability (4)
- Systemic Change (27)
- Systems Mapping (6)
- Tech 4 MEL (4)
- Theory-based evaluations (6)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (19)
- Value for Investment (2)
- Value for Money (4)
-
Adaptive Approaches [+]
(84)
- Adaptive Learning (11)
- Adaptive Management (29)
- Adaptive Rigour (2)
- Agile & Lean approaches (1)
- CLA (Collaborating Learning Adapting) (6)
- Design Thinking / HCD (2)
- MSD - Market Systems Development (6)
- Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships (1)
- Other sectors (3)
- Participation (4)
- PDIA (Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation) (1)
- PEA (Political Economy Analysis) (3)
- Results Based Management (1)
- Systemcraft (1)
- Systems Thinking / Complexity (31)
- TWP (Thinking & Working Politically) (5)
- Cases (23)
- Courses (1)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(39)
- AFD (Agence Française de Développement) (1)
- China (1)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (7)
- GIZ (Germany) (5)
- Hivos - Netherlands (1)
- Irish Aid (1)
- KOICA (Korea's International Co-operation Agency) (1)
- NGO Perspectives (8)
- OECD/DAC - Results Based Management (2)
- Private Companies - Development Industry (2)
- Private Donors (OSF, Hewlett...) (2)
- UNDP, UN Global Pulse, UN... (5)
- USAID (11)
- World Bank (1)
-
Geography
(28)
-
Africa
(17)
- Central Africa (2)
-
Eastern Africa
(15)
- Kenya (1)
- Malawi (2)
- Mozambique (5)
- Rwanda (2)
- Somalia (3)
- South Sudan (1)
- Tanzania (1)
- Uganda (2)
- Zambia (1)
- Zimbabwe (3)
- Northern Africa (2)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
- West Africa (10)
-
Americas
(6)
-
Central America
(4)
- Ecuador (2)
- El Salvador (1)
- Guatemala (2)
- Mexico (3)
- South America (4)
-
Central America
(4)
-
Asia
(17)
- South-eastern Asia (2)
-
Southern Asia
(12)
- Bangladesh (7)
- India (1)
- Nepal (7)
- Pakistan (3)
- Sri Lanka (1)
-
Western Asia
(3)
- Israel (1)
- Jordan (1)
- Lebanon (1)
- State of Palestine (1)
- Syrian Arab Republic (1)
-
Europe
(2)
-
Southern Europe
(1)
- Spain (1)
-
Western Europe
(1)
- Germany (1)
-
Southern Europe
(1)
-
Africa
(17)
-
Practical
(38)
- Tools (6)
-
Sectors [+]
(63)
- Agriculture (3)
- Alternative Development (6)
- Cash Trasfers (2)
- Children (8)
- Citizen Engagement (1)
- Climate Change (2)
- Economic development (6)
- Education (3)
- Employment (1)
- Fragile and Conflict Aflicted Settings (2)
- Gender (2)
- Governance and Accountability (13)
- Health (1)
- Humanitarian Aid (2)
- Innovation (in Development) (4)
- Knowledge to Practice (3)
- Locally driven development (3)
- Organizational Change (3)
- Peace Building (2)
- Private Sector Development (1)
- Research for Development (R4D) (4)
- Scaling up / Propagating (4)
- Social Accountability (1)
- Social Protection (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (40)
- Book (5)
- Book Section (1)
- Conference Paper (1)
- Journal Article (36)
- Magazine Article (4)
- Manuscript (1)
- Presentation (2)
- Radio Broadcast (1)
- Report (97)
- Thesis (2)
- Video Recording (7)
- Web Page (4)