3ie comment on video tutorials

3ie, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, has sent a comment explaining why you need to register if you wish to take the useful tests that come with their video tutorials on impact evaluation. For some technical reason their comment cannot be displayed under my original post (below), so I am taking the liberty to post it right here:

Video tutorials on impact evaluation

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) have published a set of six video lectures on impact evaluation. They are available here. The lectures are presented by different specialists; the slides accompanying the lectures can be downloaded from the same website.

Ending violence against women - what works?

In case you have not come across this yet: the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has published a whole series of "How To Notes" and "Evidence Digests" to guide work on violence against women and girls. There is a dedicated web page (click on the link to get there) where you can download the guides. 

The web page includes a link to Violence against Women and Girls Newsletters, which are published at quarterly intervals. The newsletters are rich in information on a wide range of interventions and tools.

Quality and quantity

In this holiday season I visited my sister, who has been passionate about gardening. I brought a beautifully illustrated book for her, about pear orchards in Prussia. Prussia, a belligerent kingdom that ceased to exist in 1918, was mainly known for its military dominance in the region, and for an obsession about order and discipline. So I was hardly surprised to find, in that book, a table showing drawings of differently shaped pears, arranged in neat rows and columns. The roundest pears were displayed near the top left corner, the thinnest, longest ones near the bottom right, with dozens of intermediary states in-between. Every pear came with a drawing of its appearance, as well as a transversal cut, which was criss-crossed by lines and dots dividing it into neat circles and measurements. "Look," I exclaimed, "the Prussians developed a system to classify pears!" My sister took a quick glance and responded, somewhat bitterly, "according to size, of course".

We're still alive!

This is the first time I have not posted anything on my blog for 2 months in a row. It has been a very, very busy time. My associate Wolf Stuppert and I have completed our review of evaluation approaches and methods for interventions related to violence against women and girls. If you want to find out more about it, please visit the dedicated blog www.evawreview.de, where you can also download the full review report, as well as the scoping and inception reports. 
Watch this space for more posts in the very near future. Thank you for your patience!

Resources for facilitators

A friend has asked me about resources on facilitation of planning workshops. This makes me realise that my approach in facilitation is fed by many different streams. Some favourite resources in English:

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!