Practical tips: note-taking during interviews

Taking notes in "qualitative" interviews, for example at the occasion of evaluations, seems a fairly simple and straightforward thing to do. Over the years, I have discovered that people take notes in many different ways. The way that works best for me is demanding on the interviewer, but quite efficient: no/ little need for extra transcription time after the interview!

Free webinars on evaluation

...now available on the YouTube Channel of the American Evaluation Association.
The webinars are in the first row of the page that opens when you click on "YouTube Channel" above. The second row is filled with other interesting videos, such as Julia Coffman's speech on evaluator's mistakes and the importance of sharing them with others so that they don't repeat them. Enjoy!

What men can do to end gender violence

An impressive TED talk, not only for beginners - click HERE to see it. Jackson Katz encourages "bystanders" to stop "laughing along or pretending not to hear it". The speech is not totally respectful of feminist organisations (shame on you if you're more interested in the video now ;-) but it is definitely worth watching.

Quotes from the "Politics of Evidence" Conference

In late April, the "Politics of Evidence" conference brought together (at the IDS in Brighton) development and evaluation practitioners from a rich mix of professional backgrounds and countries. Some of the papers presented have been available on the internet, such as Rosalynd Eyben's article on the The power of results and evidence artefacts. Eyben's paper is about tools initially designed to stimulate critical thinking which have mutated into instruments of confusion: For example, the log-frame was built to encourage people to reflect on the assumptions behind their "project logic" - but in most contemporary versions, the "assumptions" column has disappeared.

Evidence artefacts - an example

This is a case study prepared for the "Big Push Forward" conference next week (for links to the conference, see the extra post below). 

The example is from a real organisation, a group working on human rights.

Coming soon: Critique of results and evidence artefacts

Next week I'll attend the Big Push Forward conference at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton. For those who can't make it there, a few interesting papers are already available on the web (for example Carrots and sticks: Results and evidence artefacts and their effects | The Big Push Forward).
The final plenary session will be "live streamed" on 24 April at 15:45 (3:45 pm) UK time, under this LINK. Watch this space for post-conference musings in mid-May.

Rigor = being honest about the limits

This is another instalment of my "moans about poor evaluation practice" series, triggered by a recent review of evaluation reports in the complex field of governance and human rights.
One of the reports I read used a "traffic light" system: for each evaluation question, the authors decided whether what they found was good ("green light"), in need of some improvement ("yellow light"), or bad ("red light"). That in itself made me feel a bit queasy. Does a "red light" mean an organisation has to drop everything and stop operating? Does that form of visualisation pay any respect to the efforts people put into their work? Yes, evaluators are there to assess the "value" of what they are supposed to evaluate, but does that entitle us to make pronouncements as to what must stop and what can go on? I am not sure.

Measuring time with a yardstick?

Much of my work on monitoring and evaluation is with organisations that work on human rights and governance. It is harder for them to show they make a difference than for people who build roads or wells. Building a road is complicated, but the builders have reasonable control over the process and at the end they can say, "we have built a 50-kilometre road". Human rights and governance work is more indirect: it is not the intervention of  human rights organisation "X" that frees a prisoner - it is a prison guard, the last piece in a huge puzzle of actors and actions. It is not campaign Y that ends domestic violence in a woman's life - it is herself, when she leaves an abusive relationship, or the abusive partner when he stops battering, for reasons that are far beyond the reach of campaign "Y". And you can't blame, say, Amnesty International if the US government fails to close down the Guantánamo detention camp.

5 reasons why gender mainstreaming remains important

Gender mainstreaming and work to end violence against women (VAW) have been on development agencies' agendas for decades. Why are they still important? Some of us feel that "everyone" in development and human rights organisations are well aware of the issues. But the truth is that in organisations without any explicit focus on gender equality or gender justice, the levels of awareness for gender-based discrimination (and the need to end it) tend to be uneven. Efforts to promote gender equality remain limited and often isolated. Some would prefer to drop "gender" altogether, busy as they feel with all those other issues that must be "mainstreamed" - good governance, environmental protection, HIV/AIDS prevention, "you name it!"

But there are at least five reasons why "gender mainstreaming" must continue:

1. Organisations that are committed to universal human rights have a responsibility to ensure their work respects and promotes human rights. Women’s rights are human rights, enshrined in widely accepted international treaties as the the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979). Any rights-based approach that neglects women's and girls' rights is inadequate.
2. International movements and campaigns rally large numbers of people. Women and girls make up the majority of the world population (although in India and China, sex-selective abortion and infanticide are skewing sex ratios towards boys). Opportunities are likely to be missed and mistakes will be made if planners, implementers and evaluators ignore women's interests and needs, and refrain from engaging women as interlocutors, collaborators and allies.
3. Many development and human rights agencies are into education and campaigning - i.e., they attempt to spread ideas around, and to mobilise others to join them in their cause. The messages they convey, implicitly or explicitly, influence people's minds: research has shown that campaigning can reinforce or weaken people's value systems - broadly speaking, what they consider to be "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong". (See for example the report Common Cause - The Case for Working with our Cultural Values. I'll summarise it in a future post!) Hence, it is important to avoid reinforcing values that condone discrimination and other violations against women which would be in stark contradiction with the development and human rights goals most of us defend.
4. Gender-based violence is not only one of the most pervasive human rights violations, it also jeopardises development. For example, large numbers of women and girls (as well as a smaller proportion of men and boys) have experienced sexual extortion in schools, health services and police stations, with dire consequences for their physical well-being, their mental health and their social status. Getting girls to school is right, but if they risk their lives because teachers and classmates are likely to abuse them, something is deeply wrong. Gender-blindness (sometimes euphemistically called "gender neutrality") helps to turn a blind eye on the bleak situation that an estimated one-third of the world's women face.
5. In terms of efficiency, any organisation has an interest in ensuring that staff members and volunteers enjoy equal opportunities to unfold their full potential at work, regardless of their sex (and of the size and form of their households)

These are the main reasons that have come to my mind. Feel free to add more by using the comments function below!

PS: 2012 was my "gender year": I carried out several consultancies linked to mainstreaming gender into evaluations, into development programmes, and into the life of organisations without any particular focus on women's rights. In addition, I wrote a guide for Oxfam International on mainstreaming one aspect of its efforts for gender justice: its commitment to end violence against women (VAW). (Download its English version here; translations are in progress.)

New resource on "Mainstreaming" violence prevention

The Oxfam Guide to End Violence against Women, which I wrote earlier this year with generous input from Oxfam International affiliates around the world, has been published in a colourful version that can now be downloaded from the Oxfam Policy and Practice Blog (click on the title to get there). It can work as a useful guide for any organisation whose objectives are not primarily to end violence against women (hence the term "mainstreaming" in the title).

(Photograph: Oxfam)
Gender-based violence and, in particular, violence against women and girls are such widespread issues that no-one can afford to ignore them. For example, in Germany, one in four women have been violently assaulted by a male intimate partner - and that figure does not include more "subtle" forms of violence that are widespread, such as sexual harassment at work, at educational institutions and in other public places. Please read the guide. I'd also be delighted to take your feed-back, via the comments function below or by e-mail if you know my address ;-) Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about violence against women and what to do about it, there is plenty of information available from the UN WOMEN Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women.

Gender Budgeting in Europe

The European Community of Practice on Gender Mainstreaming came together in Berlin in late September to discuss gender budgeting in the European Social Fund. It was interesting to learn about the rich experience - and vast differences - in gender mainstreaming and gender budgeting by public administrations across Europe. The keynote speeches and other conference materials are available on the activities page of the ECP Website (click on the link to get there).

Evidence of what worked, at some point, in some place

A major highlight at this year’s annual conference of the German Evaluation Society (DeGEval) was Prof. Gert Biesta’s keynote speech on research as a provider of evidence for policy. “Evidence-based” is a buzzword in development (as well as other disciplines, such as education); bilateral and multilateral donors have mobilised considerable funding to “building an evidence base”. The basic idea is that interventions should be based on the best possible evidence of what works. In his speech, Biesta unravelled the meanings of “intervention”, “evidence” and “what works” to raise fundamental questions: What role should evidence play in policy making? What kind of evidence are we talking about, anyway, and can it replace professional judgement and wider democratic deliberation?

Take time to prepare evaluations!

Since September, there has been an extraordinary flurry of calls for proposals for external evaluations. This is good news; it suggests that people find it important to evaluate their work. But, upon closer examination, you'll notice that many calls for proposals envisage the evaluations to begin just a couple of weeks after the deadline for offers, and to end within a month or so. That is frustrating for busy consultants, who tend to be fully booked several months ahead. Narrow time-frames may also make it difficult for those who commission the evaluation to identify sufficiently skilled and experienced candidates. If you take evaluation seriously, then surely you want it to be done in the best possible way your resources allow? 

Over the years, I have come to appreciate time as a major element of evaluation quality.

Facilitating workshops in two and more languages

A friend recently asked me about interpreters to support a planning workshop in East Africa, reminding me that I meant to write down a few guiding thoughts on facilitation in multi-lingual contexts. It is complicated, but if it works out well it is truly empowering to those who do not speak the "dominant" language.

Participatory Statistics II

Months ago I promised I would write more about a riveting conference I attended in May 2012, "The Rigour and Potential of Participatory Statistics". (Granted, the title sounds a bit clumsy, but if you don't mention "rigour", you don't get anywhere, nowadays ;-) Unfortunately there seems to be no conference documentation (apart from the invitation) on  the web. But I have my notes!