The OECD-DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation, built through international consensus, provide a guide to good practice. They are not intended to be used as a development evaluation manual, but they outline the key quality dimensions for each phase of a typical evaluation process: defining purpose, planning, designing, implementing, reporting, and learning from and using evaluation results. Principles informing the whole of the evaluation process are transparency and independence; integrity and respect for diversity; partnership, coordination and alignment; capacity development; and quality control.
In today’s evolving development context, evaluation has an important role in informing policy decisions and helping to hold all development partners mutually accountable for development results. The way development evaluation is carried out must also reflect this new context, becoming more harmonised, better aligned and increasingly country-led, to meet the evaluation needs of all partners.
Development evaluation is the systematic and objective assessment of an on-going or completed development intervention, its design, implementation and results. When carrying out a development evaluation, the following overarching considerations should be taken into account throughout the process.
- Transparency and independence: The evaluation process should be transparent and independent from programme management and policy-making, to enhance credibility.
- Integrity and respect for diversity: Evaluation should be undertaken with integrity, respecting human rights and differences in culture and beliefs, mindful of gender roles, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation and language.
- Partnership, coordination and alignment: A partnership approach should be considered early in the process, taking into account national and local evaluation plans.
- Capacity development: Positive effects on the evaluation capacity of partners should be maximised.
- Quality control: This should be ongoing throughout the evaluation. It could be carried out through an internal and/or external mechanism such as peer review, an advisory panel, or a reference group.
The members of the evaluation team should possess a mix of evaluative skills and thematic knowledge and be independent of the project. Stakeholders should be able to contribute to the evaluation process, which should be carried out within budget and the allotted time. The intended use of the evaluation should be stated clearly, addressing why and for whom it is undertaken and how it is to be used for learning and accountability functions. The feasibility of an evaluation should also be assessed. Further:
- The evaluation objectives should be translated into relevant and specific evaluation questions, which should also address cross-cutting issues, such as gender, environment and human rights.
- The evaluation questions should determine the most appropriate approach and methodology. The planning and design phase should culminate in the drafting of Terms of Reference (ToRs).
- The programme being evaluated should be clearly defined, including a description of the intervention logic or theory.
- The evaluation report should: be understandable to the intended audience, describe the context, logic and underlying assumptions of the intervention, the factors affecting success and answer the questions set out in the ToRs.
- Conclusions, recommendations and lessons should be clear, relevant, targeted and actionable. They should be systematically responded to by the person or body targeted in each recommendation. Agreed follow-up actions should be tracked to ensure accountability for their implementation.
- The evaluation results should be presented in an accessible format and be systematically distributed internally and externally for learning and follow-up, and to ensure transparency.
