My M&E

My M&E is an interactive WEB 2.0 platform to share knowledge on country-led M&E systems worldwide. In addition to being a learning resource, My M&E facilitates the strengthening of a global community, while identifying good practices and lessons learned about program monitoring and evaluation in general, and on country-led M&E systems in particular.


http://www.mymande.org/?q=wikimehome

While My M&E was founded by IOCE, UNICEF and DevInfo, it is managed by a consortium of partner organizations including IDEAS, IPDET, WHO/PAHO, UNIFEM, ReLAC, Preval, Agencia brasileira de Avaliacao, SLEvA and IPEN. If your organization wishes to join the consortium as a partner, please send an email to Marco Segone, UNICEF Evaluation Office, at msegone@unicef.org.

My M&E is a collaborative website whose content can be modified continuously by users. To develop and strengthen a global community on country-led M&E systems, registered users have the facility to complete their own social profile and exchange experiences and knowledge through blogs, discussion forums, documents, webinars and videos.


This is a great resource! Enjoy.

Systemic Approaches in Evaluation

On January 25 and 26, 2011 the Evaluation and Audit Division of the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the Evaluation Unit of GIZ offered a forum to discuss systemic approaches to evaluation at an international conference.

More than 200 participants from academia, consulting firms and NGOs discussed, amongst others, the following questions:

• What are systemic approaches in evaluation?
• For which kind of evaluations are systemic approaches (not) useful? Can they be used to enhance accountability, for example?
• Are rigorous impact studies and systemic evaluations antipodes or can we combine elements of both approaches?
• Which concrete methods and tools can be used in systemic evaluation?

http://www.evaluation-conference.de/en/index.html

You can find videos and download presentations from this website.

Online Training in Monitoring and Evaluation

The Global Health eLearning Center is provide online training in various topics, some of which include monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Some of the M&E course include:

• Data Quality
• Data Use for Program Managers
• Economic Evaluation
• M&E Frameworks for HIV/AIDS Programs
• M&E Fundamentals

In order to take these online courses you must register, but registration is free. Also, certificates can be earned for these courses.

So, go to Global Health eLearning Center and take an online M&E course!

Distance Surveying With Google Forms

Distance learning refers to students who learn from a teacher but who are not physically in a classroom, but rather some distance away but connecting with the teacher and lesson via technology, such as an internet browser or other software. Distance surveying is basically the same principle in that it refers to surveying individuals from a distance via technology, such as telephone, email or the internet.

I'm currently involved with a child protection research project in Iraq. One component of the research is to survey key informants on child protection mechanisms, regulations and policies. These key informants include people from Iraqi ministries and agencies, lawyers, United Nations officials, local and international NGOs, and child protection professionals inside Iraq, both in the Arabic and Kurkish speaking governorates. The distance to travel as well as security issues makes conducting face-2-face interviews costly and risky.

A wonderful tool for distance surveying is Google Forms. It is a flexible form for survey development than includes a built-in data collection system and it does not require any coding and is free of charge! The only "catch" is that you must have an internet connection and a Google Gmail account. Once have get, or if you have a Gmail account, go to Documents and select Forms. To develop a survey tool is quite intuitive but for those who would like some help go here: Google Forms Tutorial

Also, you may have noticed that to use this type of distance survey the respondents will need to have access to an internet connection and an internet browser. Most of the key informants I mentioned above have access to an internet connection and an internet browser.

The survey process involves finding a "survey champion" in each of the groups, for example one person in the UN who will promote the survey among colleagues. The survey champion would call or send an email telling their colleague about the survey and the importance of their participation. A follow-up email would be sent with the link to the Google Form survey. Each key informant would complete the questionnaire. For those key informants who did not complete the online survey in the requested time would receive a follow-up from the "survey champion" in their group.

Once completed all responses are automatically compiled into a Google Spreadsheet which can then be analyzed online, using Google analysis, or downloaded into other data analysis software such as SPSS.

Software for Network Visualization and Analysis

On 27 March 2010 I had blog called, Network Analysis and Visualization of Qualitative Data. In response to this blog I received several requests to provide software programs that can be used in network visualization and analysis.

Increasingly each year there are more software developed for network visualization, but all network visualization tools require some degree of knowledge about how to structure network data and databases PRIOR to visualization. The only network visualization tool I know of (at this time) that requires a minimum knowledge of network data structure (or theory), is free-of-charge, and has some degree of document support is NodeXL.

NodeXL is a MSExcel add-on template for visually analyzing networks but also provides basic network statistics (in-degree, density, etc.). Most network visualization software require network data to be entered in one format (e.g., txt, DL, or other) and then imported into a software (NetDraw, Pajek) for visualization. NodeXL allows you to enter data directly, via in a familiar spreadsheet format, then to visualize it, and modify various characteristics of the network easily.

NodeXL is up-dated frequently and can provide great visual illustrations of ties, links, clusters, communities, and networks for a better understanding of your data.

Measuring Empowerment

A new handbook was brought to my attention recently, which I have not had a chance to review yet. It is called, Measuring Empowerment? Ask Them: Quantifying qualitative outcomes from people's own analysis (2010), published by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). The authors are Dee Jupp and Shoel Ibn Ali. The Preface is written by Robert Chambers.

I have taken parts from the Premble to provide a quick summary of this handbook:

"Quantitative analyses of qualitative assessments of outcomes and impacts can be undertaken with relative ease and at low cost. It is possible to measure what many regard as unmeasurable. This publication suggests that steps in the process of attainment of rights and the process of empowerment are easy to identify and measure for those active in the struggle to achieve them.....This paper presents the experience of one social movement in Bangladesh, which managed to find a way to measure empowerment by letting the members themselves explain what benefits they acquired from the Movement and by developing a means to measure change over time. These measures, which are primarily of use to the members, have then been subjected to numerical analysis outside of the village environment to provide convincing quantitative data, which satisfies the demands of results-based management."

Participatory Impact Assessment

The Feinstein International Center, a Tufts University, has a rather comprehensive guide on participatory assessment titled, Participatory Impact Assessment: A Guide for Practitioners (2007).The authors are Andrew Carley, John Burns, Dawit Abebe and Omeno Suji. This guide focuses on measuring the impact of livelihood projects.

An eight stage approach is outlined that includes:

1. Provide a framework for assessing the impact of livelihoods interventions.
2. Clarify the differences between measuring process and real impact .
3. Demonstrate how Participatory Impact Assessment (PIA) can be used to measure the impact of different projects in different contexts using community identified impact indicators .
4. Demonstrate how participatory methods can be used to measure impact where no  baseline data exists .
5. Demonstrate how participatory methods can be used to attribute impact to a project .
6. Demonstrate how qualitative data from participatory tools can be systematically  collected and numerically presented to give representative results of project impact .

The three fundamental questions the PIA attempts to answer are: a) what changes have there been in the community since the start of the project?, b) which of these changes are attributable to the project?, and c) what differences have these changes made to people's lives?

Not all donors are open to participatory methods, especially if it entails the development of indicators by community members during or even after a project. Most donors prefer a list of result and impact indicators prior to project implementation. But, for those projects with greater donor flexibility to use participatory assessment techniques this guide presents some basic steps and methods.