Review of Evaluations - Inception Report ready

It has been quiet again on this blog - this is because we have been busy producing the Inception Report and pursuing our research on approaches and methods in evaluations of interventions on violence against women and girls. (Apologies I still haven't found a shorter way of saying this!)

You can download our full inception report and find the link to an interesting discussion of our work by Rick Davies on our dedicated review blog www.evawreview.de.

Gentle evaluations for huge projects?

Some weeks ago we – Wolf Stuppert (my associate and co-author of this posting) and I – noticed a call for evaluation proposals that seemed exciting. It was about a 50-million-USDollar initiative in a field where both of us have substantive experience. 

At first sight, the terms of reference (TOR) looked exciting: an ambitious, nationwide programme that would have to be asessed for its replicability in other contexts. But our level of excitement dropped dramatically when we studied the TOR in more detail.

Tell a story: Evaluations that Make a Difference

The research project "Evaluations that Make a Difference" is looking for stories about evaluations. The idea is to explain what has made evaluations influential or successful in an emotionally more engaging way than scientific publications. A lovely idea! Find more information by clicking on the following link: Call for Stories | Evaluations that Make a Difference

Evaluations of interventions related to violence against women and girls

A quick update on our review of evaluations - the full scoping report, a link to dozens of published evaluation reports in the field of violence against women and girls, and more are now available on our dedicated blog www.evawreview.de
We have started the blog because we use a particularly interesting method in our review - Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Our inception report, to be posted on the blog in March, will provide more detail. Come and have a look!

Resources on gender, and gender & corruption

In 2012 and 2013, I carried out short series of gender sensitisation and gender mainstreaming training for organisations that work on development, human rights and governance issues. Some of the materials that have inspired the training are in the public domain. My favourites are:

Scared away by jargon?

Last month I discovered the new IDS-BRIDGE resource pack on Gender and Social Movements (scroll down to my 11 October post for all the links). I was so excited about the new resource that I distributed the handy "in brief bulletin" document to all prospective participants of a gender sensitisation workshop (with NGO staff relatively new to gender issues) - as a preparatory reading.

I should have known better.

Documenting qualitative comparative analysis and process tracing

I am delighted to announce that I have started a dedicated blog on Wolfgang Stuppert's and my work on a DFID-commissioned review of evaluations of interventions related to violence against women and girls. We will use qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) and process tracing to examine the evaluation approaches and methods used in up to 100 evaluations completed since 2008. 

Since QCA and process tracing are still relatively new in evaluation, we have decided to document our work on the new blog www.evawreview.de, which is supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) We will post the main steps of our work, every few weeks. Just like this blog here, it includes a "follow by e-mail" function, if you wish to be alerted when new posts come up.

Exciting new resource pack for social movements

BRIDGE has published a rich multi-media resource pack on gender and social movements. Find the full set on http://socialmovements.bridge.ids.ac.uk/, a beautifully designed, dedicated website. I particularly recommend the overview report and, for busy people, the brief bulletin that summarises key points.

WANTED: evaluation reports and contacts

The UK Department for International Development (DFID) has commissioned a review of evaluation approaches and methods for violence against women and girls (VAWG) interventions in development and humanitarian contexts ('the Review').  The Review will provide recommendations as to how evaluations in this complex field can be designed and implemented to yield maximum use. It will use qualitative comparative analysis and process tracing to detect the drivers of effective evaluations of VAWG interventions, and describe good practice. Review findings will be widely disseminated to stakeholders and made publically available.

The Review team, led by international consultants Michaela Raab and Wolf Stuppert, plans to analyse up to 100 evaluations. Since relatively few evaluations have been published, we need your support in identifying and sharing those that you are aware of – including unpublished evaluations. The evaluation reports will be read by the Review team only, so please do not hesitate to share evaluations even if you have doubts about their quality or about their findings. Findings will be presented in an aggregated form that will prevent readers from identifying specific evaluations.

If you have access to evaluation reports that meet the criteria outlined below, we would be grateful if you could forward them to this address. The criteria are:

• Published and unpublished evaluations of development or humanitarian programmes that (i) either focus on preventing or responding to any form of violence against women and girls (VAWG), (ii) or include a VAWG component as part of a wider initiative (for example, on human rights, humanitarian protection, peace building, post-conflict reconstruction or HIV/AIDS)
• Evaluations that have been completed between January 2008 and October 2013
• Report in English.

Furthermore, we would be grateful for your identifying persons the review team could interview to find out about their experience with VAWG-related evaluations. You are kindly requested to provide the name and contact details (e-mail address and/ or phone number) of

• Evaluation commissioners (for example, programme officers who have commissioned VAWG-related evaluations)
• Evaluators (both external consultants and internal evaluators who have carried out VAWG-related evaluations
• Leading members of VAWG-related initiatives or organisations 

The Review report will individually credit everyone who contributes evaluation reports and data (unless you wish not to be mentioned). We would be grateful if you could send us your response by 20 October. In addition, you are encouraged to forward this message to others who may have access to VAWG-related evaluations and professionals in the field. 

We are looking forward to learning from the evaluations you will share!

Update on OECD/ DAC Evaluation standards and advice

The OECD Development Assistance Committee appears to have moved part of its evaluation pages to new sites. That means that some links in older OECD/DAC-related posts here may be broken - my apologies! Some day I will get help to update all links since 2008, when I started blogging. In the meantime, here are a few important links that work:

Avis aux francophones - good news for French readers

Le guide Oxfam « Eradiquer les violences faites aux femmes » vient de paraître en version française. Vous le trouvez, en version PDF, sur le site d’Oxfam international que voici ; la version anglaise est disponible là. Si vous avez une connection un peu lente, vous pouvez aussi regarder la version anglaise directement sur ce site. Bonne lecture !

Conducting qualitative interviews

I am working on a publication on qualitative interviews – but it’ll be in German and it’ll take ages to complete because it is one of those spare-time not-for-profit projects. Since a friend is about to embark on a round of interviews we have designed together, I have decided to summarise some bits in English. Here they are! 

Evaluating peace building activites

Just in case this has escaped your attention: Last year the OECD Development Assistance Committee published comprehensive guidelines on Evaluating Peacebuilding Activities. Click on the title to download the document, or else read it on-line here: Evaluating Peacebuilding.

Politics of Evidence - an abstract

I have submitted a conference report on the "Politics of Evidence" Conference in Brighton (April 2013) to a German evaluation journal. Check this blog for an announcement of its publication date! Meanwhile, here's an abstract in English:
More than 100 specialists participated in the ‘Politics of Evidence’ conference at the Institute of Development Studies in April 2013. The main theme was the growing tendency to tie funding for international development and transformative initiatives to the use of pre-defined instruments (‘evidence artifacts’) for effectiveness and impact assessment – and how to deal with this trend.
The participants were in favour of well-informed planning and robust monitoring as a source of information for effective project steering, and as way to expand the knowledge base. However, when the use of a narrow spectrum of specific instruments becomes an obligation, distortion and loss of effectiveness may occur. A key conclusion was the call for rigorous relevance and relevant rigour, i.e.: the main criterion for the choice of instruments for project monitoring should be the extent to which they generate practical use.
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Here is the link to the conference and to the papers delivered by Rosalind Eyben and Brendan Whitty respectively. (Click on the names to get to the paper.) Additional resources are available on the Politics of Evidence site under "Resources".
By the way, the notes of a somewhat smaller but equally interesting event at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton are also available on the web now. The Centre for Development Impact has hosted an "Impact Innovation and Learning Event: Towards a Research and Practice Agenda for the Future". Click on the title to get to their web-site, which includes the keynote speakers' power point presentations as well as a list of 18 action points. I also recommend the site of the IDS Centre for Development Impact, a fairly new group that brings together academic research and evaluation practice. To be continued...

Recruitment by Quiz?

An international agency has launched a new web-based "experts' roster". The organisation has an important mission and I have the kind of expertise they look for, so it seems natural to register.
The opening page of the roster looks friendly and clear. I complete a few text boxes with basic data on my life and work.
The following step is tedious -