Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook.Doc Uploaded Successfully Essay Example

Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook.Doc Uploaded Successfully Essay This handbook deals with the basics of setting up and using a monitoring and evaluation system for a project or an organization. It clarifies what monitoring and evaluation are, how you plan to do them, how you design a system that helps you monitor and an evaluation process that brings it all together usefully. It looks at how you collect the information you need and then how you save yourself from drowning in data by analyzing the information in a relatively straightforward way. Finally it raises, and attempts to address, some of the issues to do with taking action on the basis of what you have learned. Need of Having Handbook on monitoring and evaluation If you don’t care about how well you are doing or about what impact you are having, why bother to do it at all? Monitoring and evaluation enable you to assess the quality and impact of your work, against your action plans and your strategic plan. In order for monitoring and evaluation to be really valuable, you do need to have planned well. Planning is dealt with in detail in other toolkits on this website. We will write a custom essay sample on Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook.Doc Uploaded Successfully specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook.Doc Uploaded Successfully specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Monitoring and Evaluation Handbook.Doc Uploaded Successfully specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer Application of the Handbook The Handbook can helpful in following events: †¢ To set up systems for data collection during the planning phases of a project or organization. †¢ To analyze data collected through the monitoring process. †¢ To know how efficiently and how effectively you are working. †¢ To evaluate what impact the project is having at any stage. In fact, monitoring and evaluation are invaluable internal management tools. If you don’t assess how well you are doing against targets and indicators, you may go on using resources to no useful end, without changing he situation you have identified as a problem at all. Monitoring and evaluation enable you to make that assessment. CHAPTER-1 BASIC CONCEPT OF MONITORING EVALUATION Monitoring is the systematic collection and analysis of information as a project progresses. It is aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of a project or organization. It is based on targets set and activities plann ed during the planning phases of work. It helps to keep the work on track, and can let management know when things are going wrong. If done properly, it is an invaluable tool for good management, and it provides a useful base for evaluation. It enables you to determine whether the resources you have available are sufficient and are being well used, whether the capacity you have is sufficient and appropriate, and whether you are doing what you planned to do. Evaluation is the comparison of actual project impacts against the agreed strategic plans. It looks at what you set out to do, at what you have accomplished, and how you accomplished it. It can be formative (taking place during the life of a project or organization, with the intention of improving the strategy or way of functioning of the project or organization). It can also be summative (drawing learnings from a completed project or an organization that is no longer functioning). What monitoring and evaluation have in common is that they are geared towards learning from what you are doing and how you are doing it, by focusing on: †¢ Efficiency †¢ Effectiveness †¢ Impact Efficiency tells you that the input into the work is appropriate in terms of the output. This could be input in terms of money, time, staff, equipment and so on. When you run a project and are concerned about its replicability or about going to scale, then it is very important to get the efficiency element right. Effectiveness is a measure of the extent to which a development project achieves the specific objectives it set. If, for example, we set out to improve the qualifications of all the high school teachers in a particular area, did we succeed? Impact tells you whether or not what you did made a difference to the problem situation you were trying to address. In other words, was your strategy useful? Did ensuring that teachers were better qualified improve the pass rate in the final year of school? Before you decide to get bigger, or to replicate the project elsewhere, you need to be sure that what you are doing makes sense in terms of the impact you want to achieve. Need Of Monitoring Evaluation Monitoring and evaluation enable you to check the â€Å"bottom line† of development work: Not â€Å"are we making a profit? † but â€Å"are we making a difference? † Through monitoring and evaluation, you can: †¢ Review progress; †¢ Identify problems in planning and/or implementation; Make adjustments so that you are more likely to â€Å"make a difference†. In many organizations, â€Å"monitoring and evaluation† is something that that is seen as a donor requirement rather than a management tool. Donors are certainly entitled to know whether their money is being properly spent, and whether it is being well spent. But the primary (most important) use of monitoring and evaluation should be for the organization or project itself to see how it is doing against objectives, whether it is having an impact, whether it is working efficiently, and to learn how to do it better. Plans are essential but they are not set in concrete (totally fixed). If they are not working, or if the circumstances change, then plans need to change too. Monitoring and evaluation are both tools which help a project or organization know when plans are not working, and when circumstances have changed. They give management the information it needs to make decisions about the project or organization, about changes that are necessary in strategy or plans. Through this, the constants remain the pillars of the strategic framework: the problem analysis, the vision, and the values of the project or organization. Everything else is negotiable. Getting something wrong is not a crime but failing to learn from past mistakes because you are not monitoring and evaluating, is. It is important to recognize that monitoring and evaluation are not magic wands that can be waved to make problems disappear, or to cure them, or to miraculously make changes without a lot of hard work being put in by the project or organization. In themselves, they are not a solution, but they are valuable tools. Monitoring and evaluation can: †¢ Help you identify problems and their causes; Suggest possible solutions to problems; †¢ Raise questions about assumptions and strategy; †¢ Push you to reflect on where you are going and how you are getting there; †¢ Provide you with information and insight; †¢ Encourage you to act on the information and insight; †¢ Increase the likelihood that you will make a positive development difference. The effect of monitoring and evaluation can be seen in the fol lowing cycle. Note that you will monitor and adjust several times before you are ready to evaluate and replan. EVALUATION Monitoring involves: Establishing indicators of efficiency, effectiveness and impact; †¢ Setting up systems to collect information relating to these indicators; †¢ Collecting and recording the information; †¢ Analyzing the information; †¢ Using the information to inform day-to-day management. Monitoring is an internal function in any project or organization. Evaluation involves: †¢ Looking at what the project or organization intended to achieve – what difference did it want to make? What impact did it want to make? †¢ Assessing its progress towards what it wanted to achieve, its impact targets. Looking at the strategy of the project or organization. Did it have a strategy? Was it effective in following its strategy? Did the strategy work? If not, why not? †¢ Looking at how it worked. Was there an efficient use of resource s? What were the opportunity costs of the way it chose to work? How sustainable is the way in which the project or organization works? What are the implications for the various stakeholders in the way the organization works? In an evaluation, we look at efficiency, effectiveness and impact. There are many different ways of doing an evaluation. Some of the more common terms you may have come across are: †¢ Self-evaluation: This involves an organization or project holding up a mirror to itself and assessing how it is doing, as a way of learning and improving practice. It takes a very self-reflective and honest organization to do this effectively, but it can be an important learning experience. †¢ Participatory evaluation: This is a form of internal evaluation. The intention is to involve as many people with a direct stake in the work as possible. This may mean project staff and beneficiaries working together on the evaluation. If an outsider is called in, it is to act as a facilitator of the process, not an evaluator. †¢ Rapid Participatory Appraisal: Originally used in rural areas, the same methodology can, in fact, be applied in most communities. This is a qualitative way of doing evaluations. It is semi-structured and carried out by an interdisciplinary team over a short time. It is used as a starting point for understanding a local situation and is a quick, cheap, useful way to gather information. It involves the use of secondary data review, direct observation, semi-structured interviews, key informants, group interviews, games, diagrams, maps and calendars. In an evaluation context, it allows one to get valuable input from those who are supposed to be benefiting from the development work. It is flexible and interactive. †¢ External evaluation: This is an evaluation done by a carefully chosen outsider or outsider team. †¢ Interactive evaluation: This involves a very active interaction between an outside evaluator or evaluation team and the organization or project being evaluated. Sometimes an insider may be included in the evaluation team. INTERNAL VS EXTERNAL EVALUATIONS |Advantages |Disadvantages | |Internal Evaluation | |The evaluators are very familiar with the work, the organizational |The evaluation team may have a vested interest in reaching positive | |culture and the aims and objectives. conclusions about the work or organization. For this reason, other | | |stakeholders, such as donors, may prefer an external evaluation. | |Sometimes people are more willing to speak to insiders than to |The team may not be specifically skilled or trained in evaluation. | |outsiders. | |An internal evaluation is very clearly a management tool, a way of |The evaluation will take up a considerable amount of organizational | |self-correcting, and much less threatening than an external |time. | |evaluation. This may make it easier for those involved to accept | | |findings and criticisms. | | |An internal evaluation will cost less than an external evaluation. It may cost less than an external evaluation; the opportunity costs | | |may be high. | |External evaluation (done by a team or person with no vested interest in the project) | |The evaluation is likely to be more objective as the evaluators will |Someone from outside the organization or project may not understand | |have some distance from the work. |the culture or even what the work is trying to chieve | | | | | | | | | | |The evaluators should have a range of evaluation skills and |Those directly involved may feel threatened by outsiders and be less| |experience. likely to talk openly and co-operate in the process. | |Sometimes people are more willing to speak to outsiders than to |External evaluation can be very costly. | |insiders. | | |Using an outside evaluator gives greater credibility to findings, |An external evaluator may misunderstand what you want from the | |particularly positive findings. |evaluation and not give you what you need | Selecting An External Evaluator or Evaluation Team Qualities to look for in an external evaluator or evaluation team: †¢ An understanding of development issues. †¢ An understanding of organizational issues. †¢ Experience in evaluating development projects, programs or organizations. †¢ A good track record with previous clients. †¢ Research skills. †¢ A commitment to quality. †¢ A commitment to deadlines. †¢ Objectivity, honesty and fairness. †¢ Logic and the ability to operate systematically. †¢ Ability to communicate verbally and in writing. A style and approach that fits with your organization. †¢ Values that are compatible with those of the organization. †¢ Reasonable rates (fees), measured against the going rates. When you decide to use an external Evaluator: †¢ Check his/her/their references. †¢ Meet with the evaluators before making a final decision. †¢ Communicate what you want clearly – good Ter ms of Reference †¢ Terms) are the foundation of a good contractual relationship. †¢ Negotiate a contract which makes provision for what will happen if output expectations are not met. Ask for a work plan with outputs and timelines. †¢ Maintain contact – ask for interim reports as part of the contract †¢ Build in formal feedback times. Do not expect any evaluator to be completely objective. S/he will have opinions and ideas – you are not looking for someone who is a blank page! However, his/her opinions must be clearly stated as such, and must not be disguised as â€Å"facts†. It is also useful to have some idea of his/ her (or their) approach to evaluation. DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO EVALUATION Approach |Major purpose |Typical focus |Likely methodology | | | |questions | | |Goal-based |Assessing |Were the goals |Comparing baseline | | |achievement of goals |achieved? Efficiently? |(see Glossary of | | |and objectives. Were they the right |Terms) and progress | | | |goals? |data (see Glossary of | | | | |Terms); finding ways to | | | | |measure indicators. | |Decision Making |Providing information. |Is the project effective? |Assessing range of | | | |Should it continue? How might |options related to the | | | |it be modified? |project context inputs, | | | | |process, and product. | | | | |Establishing some kind of | | | | |decision-making consensus. |Goal-free |Assessing the full |What are all the |Independent | | |range of project effects, |outcomes? What value do they |determination of needs and | | |intended and |have? |standards to judge project | | |unintended. | |worth. Qualitative and | | | | |quantitative techniques to | | | | |uncover any possible results. | |Expert judgement |Use of expertise. |How does an outside |Critical review based | | | |professional rate this |on experience, informal | | | |project? surveying, and subjective | | | | |insights. | A combination of all these approaches is recommended as the best option. However an organization can ask for a particular emphasis but should not exclude findings that make use of a different approach CHAPTER-II PLANNING FOR MONITORING AND EVALUATION Monitoring and evaluation should be part of your planning process. It is very difficult to go back and set up monitoring and evaluation systems once things have begun to happen. You need to begin gathering information about performance and in relation to targets from the word go. The first information gathering should, in fact, take place when you do your needs assessment (see the toolkit on overview of planning, the section on doing the ground work). This will give you the information you need against which to assess improvements over time. When you do your planning process, you will set indicators (see Glossary of Terms). These indicators provide the framework for your monitoring and evaluation system. They tell you what you want to know and the kinds of information it will be useful to collect. In this section we look at: †¢ What do we want to know? This includes looking at indicators for both internal issues and external issues. †¢ Different kinds of information. †¢ How will we get information? †¢ Who should be involved? There is not one set way of planning for monitoring and evaluation. The ideas included in the toolkits on overview of planning, strategic planning and action planning will help you to develop a useful framework for your monitoring and evaluation system. If you are familiar with logical framework analysis and already use it in your planning, this approach lends itself well to planning a monitoring and evaluation system. WHAT DO WE WANT TO KNOW? What we want to know is linked to what we think is important. In development work, what we think is important is linked to our values. Most work in civil society organizations is underpinned by a value framework. It is this framework that determines the standards of acceptability in the work we do. The central values on which most development work is built are: †¢ Serving the disadvantaged; †¢ Empowering the disadvantaged; Changing society, not just helping individuals; †¢ Sustainability; †¢ Efficient use of resources. So, the first thing we need to know is: Is what we are doing and how we are doing it meeting the requirements of these values? In order to answer this question, our monitoring and evaluation system must give us information about: †¢ Who is benefiting fro m what we do? How much are they benefiting? †¢ Are beneficiaries passive recipients or does the process enable them to have some control over their lives? †¢ Are there lessons in what we are doing that have a broader impact than just what is happening on our project? Can what we are doing be sustained in some way for the long-term, or will the impact of our work cease when we leave? †¢ Are we getting optimum outputs for the least possible amount of inputs? Do we want to know about the process or the product? Should development work be evaluated in terms of the process (the way in which the work is done) or the product (what the work produces)? Often, this debate is more about excusing inadequate performance than it is about a real issue. Process and product are not separate in development work. What we achieve and how we achieve it are often the very same thing. If the goal is development, based on development values, then sinking a well without the transfer of skills for maintaining and managing the well is not enough. Saying: â€Å"It was taking too long that way. We couldn’t wait for them to sort themselves out. We said we’d sink a well and we did† is not enough. But neither is: â€Å"It doesn’t matter that the well hasn’t happened yet. What’s important is that the people have been empowered. † Both process and product should be part of your monitoring and evaluation system. But how do we make process and product and values measurable? The answer lies in the setting of indicators and this is dealt with in the sub-section that follows. What Do You Want To Know? Indicators Indicators are also dealt with in overview of planning, in the section on monitoring and evaluation. Indicators are measurable or tangible signs that something has been done or that something has been achieved. In some studies, for example, an increased number of television aerials in a community has been used as an indicator that the standard of living in that community has improved. An indicator of community empowerment might be an increased frequency of community members speaking at community meetings. If one were interested in the gender impact of, for example, drilling a well in a village, then you could use â€Å"increased time for involvement in development projects available to women† as an indicator. Common indicators for something like overall health in a community are the infant/child/maternal mortality rate, the birth rate, and nutritional status and birth weights. You could also look at less direct indicators such as the extent of immunization, the extent of potable (drinkable) water available and so on. Indicators are an essential part of a monitoring and evaluation system because they are what you measure and/or monitor. Through the indicators you can ask and answer questions such as: †¢ Who? †¢ How many? †¢ How often? †¢ How much? But you need to decide early on what your indicators are going to be so that you can begin collecting the information immediately. You cannot use the number of television aerials in a community as a sign of improved standard of living if you don’t know how many there were at the beginning of the process. Some people argue that the problem with measuring indicators is that other variables (or factors) may have impacted on them as well. Community members may be participating more in meetings because a number of new people with activist backgrounds have come to live in the area. Women may have more time for development projects because the men of the village have been attending a gender workshop and have made a decision to share the traditionally female tasks. And so on. While this may be true, within a project it is possible to identify other variables and take them into account. It is also important to note that, if nothing is changing, if there is no improvement in the measurement of the key indicators identified, then your strategy is not working and needs to be rethought. DEVELOPING INDICATORS Step 1: Identify the problem situation you are trying to address. The following might be problems: †¢ Economic situation (unemployment, low incomes etc) †¢ Social situation (housing, health, education etc) †¢ Cultural or religious situation (not using traditional languages, low attendance at religious services etc) †¢ Political or organizational situation (ineffective local government, faction fighting etc) Step 2: Develop a vision for how you would like the problem areas to be/ look. This will give you impact indicators. What will tell you that the vision has been achieved? What signs will you see that you can measure that will â€Å"prove† that the vision has been achieved? For example, if your vision was that the people in your community would be healthy, then you can use health indicators to measure how well you are doing. Has the infant mortality rate gone down? Do fewer women die during child-birth? Has the HIV/AIDS infection rate been reduced? If you can answer â€Å"yes† to these questions then progress is being made. Step 3: Develop a process vision for how you want things to be achieved. This will give you process indicators. If, for example, you want success to be achieved through community efforts and participation, then your process vision might include things like community health workers from the community trained and offering a competent service used by all; community organizes clean-up events on a regular basis, and so on. Step 4: Develop indicators for effectiveness. For example, if you believe that you can increase the secondary school pass rate by upgrading teachers, then you need indicators that show you have been effective in upgrading the teachers e. g. evidence from a survey in the schools, compared with a baseline survey. Step 5: Develop indicators for your efficiency targets. Here you can set indicators such as: planned workshops are run within the stated timeframe, costs for workshops are kept to a maximum of US$ 2. 50 per participant, no more than 160 hours in total of staff time to be spent on organizing a conference; no complaints about conference organization etc. With this framework in place, you are in a position to monitor and evaluate efficiency, effectiveness and impact. DIFFERENT KINDS OF INFORMATION (QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE) Information used in monitoring and evaluation can be classified as: †¢ Quantitative †¢ Qualitative Quantitative measurement tells you â€Å"how much or how many†. How many people attended a workshop, how many people passed their final examinations, how much a publication cost, how many people were infected with HIV, how far people have to walk to get water or firewood, and so on. Quantitative measurement can be expressed in absolute numbers (3 241 women in the sample are infected) or as a percentage (50% of households in the area have television aerials). It can also be expressed as a ratio (one doctor for every 30 000 people). One way or another, you get quantitative (number) information by counting or measuring. Qualitative measurement tells you how people feel about a situation or about how things are done or how people behave. So, for example, although you might discover that 50% of the teachers in a school are unhappy about the assessment criteria used, this is still qualitative information, not quantitative information. You get qualitative information by asking, observing, interpreting. Some people find quantitative information comforting – it seems solid and reliable and â€Å"objective†. They find qualitative information unconvincing and â€Å"subjective†. It is a mistake to say that â€Å"quantitative information speaks for itself†. It requires just as much interpretation in order to make it meaningful as does qualitative information. It may be a â€Å"fact† that enrolment of girls at schools in some developing countries is dropping – counting can tell us that, but it tells us nothing about why this drop is taking place. In order to know that, you would need to go out and ask questions – to get qualitative information. Choice of indicators is also subjective, whether you use quantitative or qualitative methods to do the actual measuring. Researchers choose to measure school enrolment figures for girls because they believe that this tells them something about how women in a society are treated or viewed. The monitoring and evaluation process requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative information in order to be comprehensive. For example, we need to know what the school enrolment figures for girls are, as well as why parents do or do not send their children to school. Perhaps enrolment figures are higher for boys than for girls because a particular community sees schooling as a luxury and prefers to train boys to do traditional and practical tasks such taking care of animals. In this case, the higher enrolment of girls does not necessarily indicate higher regard for girls. HOW WILL WE GET INFORMATION? This is dealt with in some detail in the toolkit on action planning, in the section on monitoring, collecting information as you go along. Your methods for information collecting need to be built into your action planning. You should be aiming to have a steady stream of information flowing into the project or organisation about the work and how it is done, without overloading anyone. The information you collect must mean something: don’t collect information to keep busy, only do it to find out what you want to know, and then make sure that you store the information in such a way that it is easy to access. Usually you can use the reports, minutes, attendance registers, financial statements that are part of your work anyway as a source of monitoring and evaluation information. However, sometimes you need to use special tools that are simple but useful to add to the basic information collected in the natural course of your work. Some of the more common ones are: †¢ Case studies †¢ Recorded observation †¢ Diaries †¢ Recording and analysis of important incidents (called â€Å"critical incident analysis†) †¢ Structured questionnaires †¢ One-on-one interviews †¢ Focus groups †¢ Sample surveys †¢ Systematic review of relevant official statistics. WHO SHOULD BE INVOLVED? Almost everyone in the organization or project will be involved in some way in collecting information that can be used in monitoring and evaluation. This includes: †¢ The administrator who takes minutes at a meeting or prepares and circulates the attendance register; †¢ The fieldworkers who writes reports on visits to the field; †¢ The bookkeeper who records income and expenditure. In order to maximize their efforts, the project or organization needs to: †¢ Prepare reporting formats that include measurement, either quantitative or qualitative, of important indicators. For example, if you want to know about community participation in activities, or women’s participation specifically, structure the fieldworkers reporting format so that s/he has to comment on this, backing up observations with facts. (Look at the fieldworker report format given later in this toolkit. ) †¢ Prepare recording formats that include measurement, either quantitative or qualitative, of important indicators. For example, if you want to know how many men and how many women attended a meeting, include a gender column on your attendance list. Record information in such a way that it is possible to work out what you need to know. For example, if you need to know whether a project is sustainable financially, and which elements of it cost the most, then make sure that your bookkeeping records reflect the relevant information. It is a useful principle to look at every activity and say: What do we need to know about this activity, both process (how it is being done) and p roduct (what it is meant to achieve), and what is the easiest way to find it out and record it as we go along? CHAPTER-III DESIGNING A MONITORING AND/OR EVALUATION PROCESS As there are differences between the design of a monitoring system and that of an evaluation process, we deal with them separately here. Under monitoring we look at the process an organization could go through to design a monitoring system. Under evaluation we look at: †¢ Purpose †¢ Key evaluation questions †¢ Methodology. MONITORING When you design a monitoring system, you are taking a formative view point and establishing a system that will provide useful information on an ongoing basis so that you can improve what you do and how you do it. On the next page, you will find a suggested process for designing a monitoring system. For a case study of how an organization went about designing a monitoring system, go to the section with examples, and the example given of designing a monitoring system. DESIGNING A MONITORING SYSTEM Below is a step-by-step process you could use in order to design a monitoring system for your organization or project. For a case study of how an organization went about designing a monitoring system, go to examples. Step 1:At a workshop with appropriate staff and/or volunteers, and run by you or a consultant:Introduce the concepts of efficiency, effectiveness and impact. Explain that a monitoring system needs to cover all three. †¢ Generate a list of indicators for each of the three aspects. †¢ Clarify what variables need to be linked. So, for example, do you want to be able to link the age of a teacher with his/her qualifications in order to answer the question: Are older teachers more or less likely to have higher qualifications? †¢ Clarify what information the project or organization is already collecting. Step 2:Turn the input from the workshop into a brief for the questions your monitoring system must be able to answer. Depending on how complex your requirements are, and what your capacity is, you may decide to go for a computerized data base or a manual one. If you want to be able to link many variables across many cases (e. g. participants, schools, parent involvement, resources, urban/rural etc), you may need to go the computer route. If you have a few variables, you can probably do it manually. The important thing is to begin by knowing what variables you are interested in and to keep data on these variables. Linking and analysis can take place later. From the workshop you will know what you want to monitor. You will have the indicators of efficiency, effectiveness and impact that have been prioritized. You will then choose the variables that will help you answer the questions you think are important. So, for example, you might have an indicator of impact which is that â€Å"safer sex options are chosen† as an indicator that â€Å"young people are now making informed and mature lifestyle choices†. The variables that might affect the indicator include: †¢ Age †¢ Gender †¢ Religion †¢ Urban/rural †¢ Economic category †¢ Family environment †¢ Length of exposure to your project’s initiative †¢ Number of workshops attended. By keeping the right information you will be able to answer questions such as: †¢ Does age make a difference to the way our message is received? †¢ Does economic category i. e. do young people in richer areas respond better or worse to the message or does it make no difference? †¢ Does the number of workshops attended make a difference to the impact? Answers to these kinds of questions enable a project or organization to make decisions about what they do and how they do it, to make informed changes to programs, and to measure their impact and effectiveness. Answers to questions such as: Do more people attend sessions that are organized well in advance? †¢ Do more schools participate when there is no charge? †¢ Do more young people attend when sessions are over weekends or in the evenings? †¢ Does it cost less to run a workshop in the community, or to bring people to our training centre to run the workshop? Step 3:Decide how you will collect the informati on you need (see collecting information) and wh