Evaluating Development Projects and Programs

Evaluation in monitoring and evaluation in international development is the critical part of drawing out indicators and data that reflect the project’s overall success of obtaining its intended outcomes, impact and overall goal.

The evaluation of a program must occur at specific times throughout the project cycle1. The plan to conduct evaluation of the initiative and when should be identified during the planning phase. It should be used to indicate whether or not the program has achieved its intended objective.

Often it is common that there will be a mid point evaluation and an end of project evaluation. Depending on how long the intervention will run more than two phases of evaluation might occur. The design and what the evaluation will measure must systemically be identified in order for it to be effective.

The evaluation of a project will highlight the accomplishments and how effective the project was in obtaining its intended goals. It will collect and analyse indicators that reflect the project’s outcomes and impact. Outcomes of a project can be defined as the results created due to the outputs of the intervention.

When discussing outcomes, they are generally described in terms of short and long term outcomes. A good evaluation program will reflect both of these. The evaluation of impact will look at the very long term results the program had. Impact indicators are generally very hard to measure immediately at the end of project cycle during the end term evaluation.

Because impact results reflect very long term outcomes the change that has occurred will not necessarily appear in the data immediately. It is more likely that the change will take many years to effect the data collected. This can be a frustrating reality in the M&E of an initiative.

The evaluation will also look at why the project’s intended results might not have been achieved. In this regard an evaluation will offer how the project can be improved upon whether that be for a future initiative or the remainder of the project cycle

In order to conduct evaluations, specific evaluators are identified. This might be a hired internal team of M&E specialists or external evaluators that are brought in to conduct evaluations at a specific phase in the project.

The methodology of how the results will be collected should be specified throughout the final report of the evaluation. The indicators and data needed to complete the evaluation might be more challenging to obtain depending on how easily accessible the information is and how measurable the indicators are.

This is why it is crucial for clear indicators and their method of collection to be identified at the beginning of the project cycle. Despite this, other barriers to collecting indicators for evaluation might present themselves. Data systems in developing countries often times are not kept up to date or the technology collecting such data can easily fail if it is not streamlined.

[dezinfectant]

Oh this is the best evaluation presentation. Recommending this to my peers ✨

[nestorfelix]

What can be done to make sure top management utilizes the evaluation results for decision making, improving programs, etc.?

[marikevandenend]

The quick-access information in these videos is good, and I understand the producer's apparent enthusiasm level for the topics. But the narration and intro music are relatively loud, and the videos are slightly too fast paced. They switch from one conceptual word or drawing on the screen to the next immediately: it's a little high-strung feeling. It doesn't give the viewer time to sit with a concept or category for even just a second before the video throws in the next.