ALNAP Learning Links is a collection of resources and references which can be used for professional development, background reading and/or as part of academic or training programmes or presentations. Key M&E themes include: An overview of evaluation of humanitarian action Improving monitoring in...

Judith Kaitesi Katabarwa raised a discussion on EvalForward to encourage the sharing of experience and practice on disability inclusion in evaluation. This document provides a summary of key points emerged under each of the three questions proposed.

Better Evaluation developed 'GeneraTOR, which is a guide to write on the different sections of a Terms of References (ToRs). It is a word document that serves as a template where information can be saved, refined and reviewed. The navigation menu allows to find guidance on the roles and...

This FAO (2023) Guidebook presents a flexible approach that can be used in many types of fisheries co-management systems with different contexts and characteristics. The fisheries co-management effectiveness evaluation in the Guidebook is recommended to be undertaken in two separate but...

This handbook for participatory evaluation was put together by EvalParticipativa as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic from the field of evaluation: in the face of fragility and the limits of self-sufficiency, it intends to foreground the multitude of voices and experiences of the people involved...

This document from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland presents key considerations during the different phases of the evaluation process provides a list of considerations and options to implement cross cutting objectives.

This paper of the World Bank Group (2023) busts two myths regarding the use of case-based designs in evaluations that aim to answer effectiveness questions and unpack the relationships between interventions and observed changes in outcomes, broadly known as causal analysis.

This document discusses how the six evaluation criteria of the OECD DAC (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development – Development Assistance Committee) can be used to get environmental sustainability on the agenda for evaluations and monitoring. These criteria are widely used in...

The purpose of this Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) guide, published in September 2021, is to promote a common understanding and reliable practice of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) for the International Committee of the Red Cross (IFRC) project/programmes. Although the guide was designed for people...

Evaluability Assessments (EAs) aim at determining the overall quality of the design of an intervention, whether a programme, a project, a strategy, or a policy. They serve as a compass for subsequent evaluations by assessing readiness for evaluation. As such, they have the potential to both pave the...

This research project paper of CEDIL describes the use of secondary evaluation data from four government unconditional cash transfer programmes (UCTs) to identify high- and low-flyers, that is, those households that are able to use the income shock to significantly improve their living standards and...

This paper from the Global Evaluation Initiative provides some recommendations regarding the identification of key stakeholders to strengthen M&E systems, as well as assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the stakeholders.

This OEC report provides a broad analysis across 42 countries of the institutionalisation of policy evaluation, its quality and use. This systemic perspective allows for a full discussion of how evaluation can contribute to the policy cycle, as well as an overview of the policy tools that rely upon...

These pioneering evaluation Guidelines provide the framing, criteria, dimensions, and menu of methods for assessing the quality of research for development (QoR4D) in CGIAR. They can be adapted by like-minded organizations conducting research for development (R4D). The Guidelines introduce a Quality...

This chapter of the book Purposeful Program Theory (2011) of Funnel and Rogers, explains how program theory can be used to learn from success, failure, and mixed results to improve planning, management, evaluation, and evidence-based policy.

This report presents key steps to present the lessons learned from documentation. Capturing lessons learned is essential for helping us to identify good practices, avoid repeating errors, and to tap into the cumulative knowledge we have as an Organization and to use that knowledge to strengthen our...

These tips of USAID provide practical advice and suggestions on issues related to performance monitoring and evaluation. They provide guidance for evaluators on the structure, content, and style of evaluation reports.

This report of The Nature Conservancy provides an opportunity to discuss successes during the project, unintended outcomes, and recommendations for others involved in similar future projects. The report mentions a guide that presents the main lessons learned.

In this report, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) proposes a framework of evaluation lessons within the context of face-to-face communication with project/programme managers to ensure that lessons truly become 'lessons learned'.

ALNAP adapted an action learning approach for use in frontline humanitarian contexts. Action learning is a practical approach to learning-by-doing that only requires a limited time and resource investment. It focuses on both reflection and practical solutions, by encouraging actions that can have an...

This resource pack aims to strengthen frontline learning by introducing ‘action learning’ as a straightforward approach to sharing knowledge and solving problems in fast-paced environments. The pack is for programme staff who are implementing projects, staff in monitoring, evaluation, accountability...

This handbook, assembled by Mosaic & ZENDialogue, address how Results-Based Management (RBM) can be used to focus on achieving outcomes, implementing performance measurement, learning, and adapting, as well as reporting performance. RBM influences how we approach every stage in the programme cycle...

This resource of the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank focuses on the use of traditional and new methods and data sources in generating poverty maps, which are an increasingly useful tool for evaluation. Using new sources of relevant data in generating such maps helps improving how we...

This policy brief documents experiences of evidence use in policies and programmes. The brief explores how relationships between knowledge producers and users build, maintain and facilitate evidence use.

Lamia Remaud her paper presents a new system-based approach to designing and evaluating programmes in a way that fully embeds environment and biodiversity issues. It seeks to put nature back at the centre of development work in an effort to encourage stronger ambitions when it comes to mitigating or...

The Footprint Evaluation Initiative is an international collaboration to support evaluators and evaluation managers to consider environmental sustainability in all evaluations, even when this is not a stated goal of the intervention. Footprint evaluation approaches focus on the ‘footprint’ that...

This guidance document of UNICEF provides more detailed guidance on the core building blocks of impact evaluation (theory of change, evaluative criteria and evaluative reasoning), different evaluation designs and methods for data collection and analysis, and options in terms of participatory...

The review of eight projects highlights some of the methodological issues that are unique to post project (as opposed to end of project) evaluation, and point to the advantages of planning for sustainability measurement from the outset of the project.

This W.K. Kellog Foundation Evaluation Handbook is designed to encourage dialogue about the role evaluation should play at the project level. We encourage you to think differently about evaluation, so that together we can move the discipline from a stand-alone monitoring process to an integrated and...

This evaluation guide overviews evaluation process and provides more detail about each stage in the evaluation process. The guide demonstrates how to engage with stakeholders and explains how to develop an evaluation using a logic model, a measurement framework and an evaluation plan. Finally, the...

This briefing paper from joint UNICEF-BetterEvaluation and EvalSDGs, helps identifying where innovation might be most needed and develop appropriate strategies to support innovation. It describes a number of innovations to address particular challenges and provides links to more information about...

In this Research Project Paper, CEDIL argues that practitioners can pursue at least three pathways to social accountability scale: the replication of best practice, through leveraging the countervailing power of resistance, and seeking resonance with existing public sector efforts.

This glossary developed by the African Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank provides translation of all evaluation technical terms between English, French and Arabic, based on the OECD-DAC Network on Development Evaluation originally published in 2002.

CEDIL's working paper demonstrates that measurement is crucial to evaluation. Without appropriate measures, we cannot assess the effectiveness of policy. In this latest CEDIL Methods Working Paper, the authors address several conceptual issues linked to the construction and validation of appropriate...

This guideline of the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) of South Africa provides guidance to evaluators and commissioners of evaluation on how to apply an equity criterion in evaluation.

This guideline from the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) of South Africa provides technical guidance on applying a Climate and Ecosystem Health (CEH) lens when undertaking evaluative work.

This manual from ENAP demonstrates key concepts, methodological issues, as well as practical examples from the authors and reflective chapters. The manual is organized by: (1) a conceptual phase, (2) methodological phase, (3) empirical and analytical phase, (4) dissemination and transfer phase.

This presentation illustrates four pathways how Country-led Evaluations can inform the Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs). The presentation also demonstrates the difference with the Country-led Evaluations and VNRs.

Seven years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, methods and approaches for evaluating sustainable development interventions have remained largely unchanged and are failing to provide a basis for understanding how future sustainable development interventions can withstand...

This book explores a range of new and older systems mapping methods focused on representing causal relationships in systems. In a practical manner, it describes the methods and considers the differences between them; describes how to use them yourself; describes how to choose between and combine...

Hivos values working with Theory of Change (ToC) as an appropriate approach to guide its strategic thinking and action, as well as its collaborative action with others. The use of a ToC approach fosters critical questioning of all aspects of change interventions and supports adaptive planning and...

Weiss demonstrates in her article how the rational of conducting an evaluation takes place in a political context, and hence evaluators should recognize the presence of political decisions and the political arena. The author argues that knowing these political constraints is a precondition for...

This paper of CEDIL examines the current state of each of the waves (outcome monitoring, impact evaluation, systematic reviews and knowledge brokering) of the evidence revolution. The paper offers a critical perspective on each wave, and discuss the implications for evaluation in the field of...

This paper of CEDIL looks at the technical issues associated with the representation of Theories of Change and the implications of design choices for the evaluability of those theories.

This paper by CEDIL includes the use of innovative techniques to form the specific evaluative questions being asked and tested, to gather the right type of data and information on outcomes and intermediating variables, to explain findings and to disseminate them to the appropriate decision-makers...

The lack of adequate measures to capture relevant factors, and the prevalence of measurement error in existing ones, often constitute the main impediment to robust policy evaluation. Random assignment of a given treatment, when feasible, may allow for the identification of causal effects, given that...

Systematic reviews summarise and synthesise the global evidence about an intervention. By incorporating causal chain analysis, a systematic review moves beyond the question of ‘does it work?’ to ‘why does it work, for whom, under what circumstances and at what cost?’. The causal chain analysis...

This brief takes a practical, how-to approach in outlining ten steps for building a middle-level theory of change.

In the CEDIL Methods brief, ‘Evaluating complex interventions: What are appropriate methods?’ we identify four types of complex development interventions: long causal chain interventions, multicomponent interventions, portfolio interventions, and system-level interventions. These interventions are...

Timely evaluations produce results when they are needed to inform decision making while using appropriate, rigorous designs. While traditionally evaluations are carried out at the end of a programme, this brief explores methods for evaluation during the course of a programme. Such approaches are...

Choosing appropriate approaches and methods are pre-requisites for credible, independent and useful evaluation exercises in the United Nations. The Compendium of Evaluation Methods Reviewed is a guidance document resulting from discussions among members of the UNEG Working Group on Evaluation...

Impact evaluations are studies that attempt to measure the causal impact of a project, program or policy on one or more outcomes of. This book provides a comprehensive exposition of how to conduct impact evaluations. Part I provides an overview of impact evaluations and comprises five chapters which...

In this paper, fourteen leading evaluation practitioners were asked to reflect on lessons from the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) for evaluation practice. Questions discussed include the following: the importance of evaluating equity between rich and poor countries and other forms of climate...

Sous la direction de Thomas Delahais, Agathe Devaux-Spatarakis, Anne Revillard et Valéry Ridde, cet ouvrage en accès ouvert entend favoriser les échanges et contribuer à la consolidation d’un socle de références communes en évaluation. Nombre d'institutions publiques locales, nationales ou...

This guidance note was developed by the Office of Evaluation (OED) of FAO to support the planning, formulation and conduct of evaluation syntheses. It provides definitions, a typology of synthesis which can be appropriate to conduct depending whether less or more time and resources are available. as...

This note by the Asian Development Bank summarizes the meanings of evaluation utilization and the factors influencing evaluation utilizations based on literature review. Adapted by John Scott Bayley, Evaluation Specialist, ADB, 2018.

This paper describes an evaluation capacity building (ECB) approach designed to help community development practitioners work more effectively with assumptions through the intentional infusion of evaluative thinking (ET) into the program planning, monitoring, and evaluation process. The focus is on...

Evaluation – like development aid itself – can unintentionally exacerbate tensions in ways that can negatively affect people and institutions if care is not taken in designing and approaching it with caution and sensitivity. This practical guidance from global evaluation practitioners, released by...

This brief by Twende Mbele looks at Rapid Evaluations in the public sector of selected African Countries. Rapid evaluations are intended to reduce the costs of evaluation projects and the time they take, by producing a result that can feed into policy and practice quickly, but yet is sufficiently...

Dans cette vidéo, Olivier Cossée du Bureau de l’évaluation de la FAO, donne des conseils pratiques sur comment combiner approches qualitatives et quantitatives dans les études d’impact.

This interactive report has been produced to disseminate the findings of the study on evaluation dissemination at DG DEVCO, EU Delegations and non-EU organisations around the world such as the Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, International Fund for Agricultural Development, World...

This paper presents an overview of innovative technologies to overcome the obstacles to evaluation in fragile and conflict affected states and in hard-to reach-areas. It is based on lessons learned from a series of conferences held by the European Union DG DEVCO’s Evaluation Support Service in 2019...

Under the framework of the Covid-19 Evaluation Coalition, Global Affairs Canada, FAO, IFAD, WFP and other agencies identified key lessons that should inform food security and nutrition interventions during covid-19. As a follow-up to this initiative, FAO, IFAD, UNIDO and WFP are launching a rapid...

This statement of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) affirms the significance of cultural competence in evaluation. It also informs the public of AEA’s expectations concerning cultural competence in the conduct of evaluation.

This guide is a result of a partnership between UNICEF's Evaluation Office and CLEAR Anglophone Africa

A synthesis of the results and recommendations of TEEB for Agriculture and Food’s Scientific and Economic Foundations Report This report serves as a synthesis of the 2018 Scientific and Economic Foundations report and proposes a new and comprehensive Evaluation Framework in the field of agriculture...

Utilization Focused Evaluation (UFE) facilitates a learning process in which people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experiences to their work. The focus is on intended users. UFE does not prescribe any specific content, method, or theory. It is a guiding framework, rather than a...

This text, authored by Linda G. Morra Imas and Ray C. Rist, is intended as a tool for use in building development evaluation capacity. It aims to help development evaluators think about and explore the new evaluation architecture and especially to design and conduct evaluations that focus on results...

Local and national evaluators need support if they are to use SDG evaluation as an opportunity to improve policies and programmes closer to home, applying tailored approaches. This guide aims to provide this support and motivate evaluation that embodies the principles of Agenda 2030. The guide is...

The document " Better criteria for better evaluation " describes how the OECD DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet) revisited the definitions and use of the OECD DAC evaluation criteria in 2018-2019. It lays out adapted definitions for relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and...

Since 2015, the world has shown great enthusiasm for the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030.However, after more than four years since the launch of the Agenda, there are at least two threatening challenges for sustainable development. This report not only looks at challenges ahead but also uses...

This document serves as guidance on how the FAO Office of Evaluation can assess the processes and outcomes of FAO capacity development interventions. Although primarily targeting evaluation practitioners in FAO, the framework can be used by anyone engaged in project design, implementation and...

This paper looks at a range of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) innovations that are designed specifically to provide input to ongoing iterative decision-making and learning at the project level. It identifies three key areas for potential innovation: 1) timing of M&E data provision; 2) flexibility...

This publication presents the essential 'things to know' about evaluation in 10 infographics. It was prepared by ODI's Research and Policy in Development Programme (RAPID) in support of the International Year of Evaluation 2015.

This book compiles seven evaluation stories in development contexts, which in a diversified and innovative manner, produced positive effects in the place in which they took place. Scattered all over Latin America and the Caribbean, these narratives cover evaluation of interventions that worked with...

Edited by the International Development Evaluation Association - IDEAS, this book presents an authoritative overview of the role of evaluation in generating evidence for informed decision making and learning to advance sustainable development. Agenda 2030 includes the Sustainable Development Goals...

The purpose of this checklist is to guide the process of formulating and delivering evaluation recommendations. It is oriented to evaluators conducting evaluations, but may also be used by commissioners and/or managers of evaluation to help them clarify their expectations concerning recommendations...

This document was shared with EvalForward by Zahid Shabbir, M&E professional/trainer from Pakistan. It provides an overview of the key features of M&E systems.

The Wilton Park event on Revisiting independence, objectivity, and the critically reflective role of evaluation for the SDG era took place from 25 to 27 June in West Sussex, UK. The purpose of this dialogue was to enable a high level, practical but informal debate, addressing conceptual and...

The Independent Evaluation Office and the Government of Turkey co-hosted the 2017 International Conference on National Evaluation Capacities (NEC) in Istanbul, in collaboration with the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS and the European Evaluation Society (EES). The theme of the conference was...