A number of key lessons emerge from the literature on participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) and beneficiary feedback: PM&E and beneficiary feedback approaches can improve effectiveness and sustainability and reduce the costs of monitoring, but these approaches also carry risks. These include generating unrepresentative results and increasing tensions ...» more
Monitoring and evaluation
Measuring Women’s Economic Empowerment
There is no standard definition of women’s economic empowerment and the term is often used loosely. From the literature reviewed for this report, it would appear that the majority of efforts to measure women’s economic empowerment programmes focus primarily on quantitative outcomes - such as increased access to credit or increased revenue - even where the stated objectives ...» more
Critique of Governance Assessment Applications
Governance assessments are based on subjective indicators (or measures), objective indicators or a combination of the two, known as composite indicators. Composite indicators are the most popular and are used by international organisations, donors, investors and the media (Arndt, 2008). Of these the most popular seems to be the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGIs). ...» more
Evaluation of Governance Programme Indicators
Literature on performance indicators for governance programmes is sparse, and disparate in nature. In general such literature criticises the approach of applying quantitative indicators to governance programmes, or criticises the confusion of which aspects to monitor. The main weakness in the literature is a clear understanding of the relationship between governance projects ...» more
Mechanisms for Increasing Voice and Accountability
Whilst there is a vast literature on the importance of citizen voice and accountability in governance and development, there remain relatively few evaluations of the impact of donor programmes in this area. Several studies conclude there is a need for more evidence of why certain accountability mechanisms work well in certain contexts. There does not appear to be any research ...» more
Performance of Civil Society Organisations
There is no clear consensus that civil society organisations necessarily perform better or worse than private sector, government, or multilateral organisations. Few studies make direct comparisons of performance, but those that do show mixed results. This is not surprising, considering the wide range of organisations and country contexts.This report focuses primarily on the ...» more
Impact of International Volunteering
There appears to be little robust evidence on the impact of international volunteering on development, poverty alleviation or awareness-raising. Nevertheless, from the literature identified in this report, the following direct and indirect impacts were most commonly noted:Direct services related to capacity building and technical transfersPositive effects on host community ...» more
Methodologies for Measuring the Value of Civil Society
The rise of social entrepreneurship and venture philanthropy has led to an explosion of interest in the area of measuring value and calculating the impact of non-profits and social organisations. There is enormous interest in generating and developing rigorous quantitative tools to assist in accurate measurement of impact and value and a significant number of organisations are ...» more
Poverty and Vulnerability Monitoring
It is very difficult to compare the specific tools and methodologies used for poverty monitoring (PM) with those used for vulnerability monitoring (VM), as they are so diverse. However, it is possible to make some general observations in relation to differences between the 2 broad approaches:In essence, the 2 approaches are monitoring different concepts. Poverty can be seen as ...» more
Institutional Assessment of the Police and Justice Sectors
This report includes coverage of a number of donor designed frameworks for assessing the policing and justice sector. According to much of the general academic and policy literature on SSAJ programmes, substantial reform of the police force is only possible when reform of the justice system is administered at the same time. However, whilst the underlying principles for the ...» more
Voice and Accountability Indexes
Because ‘voice and accountability’ is a broad term comprising several areas of donor intervention - including civic education, rights awareness, empowerment, democracy promotion and support to civil society and the media - the literature on tools and indicators for measuring the impact of development interventions on voice and accountability is highly fragmented. With the ...» more
Quantitative and qualitative methods in impact evaluation and measuring results
There has been a renewed interest in impact evaluation in recent years amongst development agencies and donors. Additional attention was drawn to the issue recently by a Center for Global Development (CGD) report calling for more rigorous impact evaluations, where ‘rigorous’ was taken to mean studies which tackle the selection bias aspect of the attribution problem. This ...» more
M&E of Parliamentary Strengthening and Electoral Support Programmes
Parliamentary stengthening: Attempts to assess the effectiveness of parliamentary strengthening programmes need to go beyond monitoring changes within parliament, to measuring changes in parliament’s influence on government. Moreover, the political nature of legislatures, the particular types of functions for which they are responsible, and the constant evolution in membership ...» more
Prevalence as an Indicator for Anti-forced labour and Anti-sex Trafficking Projects
Prevalence does not seem to be currently used to measure the impact of anti-forced labour, anti-sex trafficking or other anti-slavery projects, although there is no evidence to suggest that it is not a suitable indicator. Instead, the following types of indicators have been used or suggested by experts for measuring the impact of justice interventions: changes in knowledge or ...» more
M&E of Participation in Governance
There is generally very little information available on evaluating the effectiveness of the inclusive/participatory aspects of governance programmes. A particular difficulty is that there is a limited understanding of what improvements in governance actually look like. Nevertheless, some common principles identified in the literature include the need for both quantitative and ...» more
Community Participation in Disaster Rehabilitation and Recovery
Much of the literature on participation in emergencies focuses on the role of community engagement in disaster preparedness. However, the literature that does address participatory approaches in disaster-affected contexts highlights the advantages, which include better analysis, effective programming and implementation, and increased accountability. In addition, such ...» more
PRSP Monitoring and Accountability in Fragile States
The focus of this query is institutional arrangements for Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) process monitoring. Most of the literature found for this query emphasises that instead of concentrating all activities in a single body, a wide set of actors should be involved, each having their own role. Within the government, for example, the central ministries of finance and planning ...» more
Political Economy Methodologies
Traditional concepts of political economy have focused on top down, macro-level approaches that examine institutions and its rules. More recently, ‘institutional economics’ and other methodologies have emphasised the need for a bottom up, micro-level, ‘game theory’ approach that looks at individual interactions and individual incentives to follow institutional rules. This is of ...» more
M&E in Fragile States
There is a general consensus on the need to move M&E beyond the project level to the sector and strategic level in fragile states. It is important to assess the overall impact of interventions on stabilising fragile states and promoting sustainable peace. Joint evaluations and agreed upon objectives, among government departments (in the case of ‘whole-of-government’ ...» more
Climate Change and Governance
By their nature, the problems created by climate change cut into the core of economic activities in fields such as transport, energy, public health, agriculture and forestry. In addition, policies linked to both reducing greenhouse gases and adapting to the impacts of climate change are closely linked to broader development issues.The risks posed both by extreme weather events ...» more
