Tips on blogging and evaluation

The AEA365 blog is featuring evaluators that blog – and this week I’ve been featured. You can read my post here where I give some tips about blogging and evaluation.

Measuring the impact of NGO programmes

An ongoing debate focuses on how NGOs can measure the impact of their work. The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and Oxfam have recently produced a very interesting paper on this subject:

Can we obtain the required rigour without randomisation? Oxfam GB’s non-experimental Global Performance Framework (pdf)

Using examples from campaigns and other programmes, the paper sets out the challenges and options in evaluating impact and proposes four options for improving impact evaluation:

1) partnering with research institutions to rigorously evaluate “strategic” interventions;
2) pursuing more evidence informed programming;
3) using what evaluation resources they do have more effectively;
4) making modest investments in additional impact evaluation capacity.

View the paper (pdf)

Latest Benchpoint survey on project management rewards, conditions and climate

Readers who are self employed, or who work in small consultancies my find this report from Benchpoint useful.

This is its fourth annual survey of the UK project management market, and there are similarities between  this population and others working as self employed consultants in the communications and evaluation field.

The survey looks at rewards (salaried vs sell-employed), working conditions and the economic climate, as well as some issues specific to project managers.

View a summary of the findings here>>

Projects, feedback and communications

Here is a post from this blog’s co-author, Richard on projects, feedback and communication failure – featured on the “How to manage a camel” blog.

Some very interesting points for those interested in the failure of communications and effective monitoring.

New evaluation website

A new evaluation website has been launched: Eval Central. It brings together on one website, feeds from different blogs and sites that focus on evaluation (including this one!). Here is an explanation from its creator:

“This experimental site integrates feeds from a variety of evaluation blogs in order to develop a single evaluation news source that can run with very little overhead.  Essentially this site is based on a directory but by opting for aggregate feeds, rather than a static list of links, the site becomes a dynamic source for readers on the lookout for new evaluation content.  When a reader clicks on any single post, they are taken directly to the source blog.”

Visit Eval Central>>

Outgoing UN evaluation chief urges evaluators to “tell it as it is”

Below is an extract of the farewell speech of Ms. Inga-Britt Ahlenius, Under-General Secretary Oversight & Evaluation of the UN. I particularly like her statement that if evaluators do not “tell it as it is” – then no one else will…

“I am aware that some of you are facing challenges to the independence of your work; management in some cases would like to continue to maintain control over the ambit of your work. They want good news, not bad news. So when you have bad news, you learn to tell the bad news in clever ways. Let me tell you a little story.

There is the old story of the Lion King who calls all his subjects to his rather smelly cave and asks them to tell him how his room smells. Nobody dares to do anything, until the dog steps up, sniffs the room and tells the King honestly that it smells. The King devours the dog for his insolence. The monkey then decides to be smarter and tells the King the room smells like roses. The King devours the monkey for his dishonesty and sycophancy. Lastly, with all else in the room trembling with fear, the sly fox steps up and tells the King that he has had a cold for the past few days and cannot smell. The King rewards the fox by making him Prime Minister of his Kingdom.

Now, regardless of the moral of this story – we in this room are NOT to be sly foxes. We are mandated to be dogs! So the question is – how do we survive as dogs when the King asks you if his room smells?

To those of you who are facing hard challenges to your operational independence, and to your professional integrity as evaluators, I would like to remind you of a quote by Dag Hammarskjold which I now and then have reason to repeat. You will find it engraved in the pavement of Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at 47th Street and First Avenue –

“Never for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions”.

Because if you, in your position as the United Nations’ evaluators do not “tell it as it is”, what you believe to be correct, then it is unlikely that anybody else in the UN will. I urge you – do not deny your convictions as evaluators!”

Help wanted -5-point Likert or 10-point numerical?

Here’s one for you our readers.

Benchpoint is currently designing a survey for a client. Most of the questions have 5-point Likert scales:

Very satisfied
Satisfied
Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
Slightly dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied

However the client wishes to have one question with a 10 point numerical scale where 9 is extremely satisfied and 0 is extremely dissatisfied.

We say we should stick to the same scale throughout the survey, and that a 5-point descriptive scale is better that a 10-point numerical scale.

What do our readers think?

Summer 2010 – Professional Development Workshop Series – evaluation and applied research

Claremont Graduate University (California, USA) has announced its Summer 2010 Professional Development Workshop Series on a variety of topics in evaluation and applied research. From August 20-23, you can participate in them directly in California or join them online for interactive webcasts:
Information and Registration>>

AEA365: Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, and Rad Resources for Evaluators

The American Evaluation Association have launched in 2010 a new blog AEA365 which aims to publish daily tips and resources for evaluation.

The blog is well worth a read – here is a post I contributed on evaluating communications and the “theory of change”.

New website for Benchpoint

 

The authors of this blog both work with Benchpoint – who have a new website -  They have tools to make your measurement really intelligent.
 (That’s enough plugging – Ed).

Richard