Impact assessment in complex development situations

This is a letter written to managers of information projects. Its aim is to provide the reader with a series of guidelines, checklists and practical suggestions for carrying out an evaluation of an information project

This report documents an initiative that, through its methods and focus, aimed to provide a realistic starting point to understanding the impact of information on development. It consisted of a electronic conference, followed by a workshop through which ideas about information and evaluation were shared and built upon. The report weaves together the input of dozens of information users and providers, policymakers, information scientists, and others from the South and the North, and presents a preliminary assessment framework as a starting point to future work in this area

This paper argues for the use of a network perspective in representing and evaluating aid interventions. Commonly used linear evaluation tools such as the logical framework (logframe) or problem tree selectively represent what an agency is trying to do, and then assess particular aspects of the intervention. Social network analysis describes social relationships which, the author contends, is what development is about. The wide range of methods and theories for network analysis means that there are lots of ways of thinking about and describing expected outcomes of interventions. Social network analysis is also very flexible in terms of the scale of the project, and can accomodate non-linear processes of change. This paper presents these five arguments for social network analysis, and then describes next steps for developing a coherent approach to evaluation based on a network perspective

Gives an overview discussion of the key characteristics of networks, noting that international development increasingly takes a network form. Networks typically put an emphasis on: facilitative leadership; building relationships and trust; light co-ordinating structure that allows decentralisation, autonomy and voluntary participation. However, these are charactersitics that traditional evaluation approaches have not been developed to address. Provides a useful check-list for evaluating networks and suggests some useful practical tools to approach the evaluation of networks, such as: ‘Contributions assessment’ to guage how effectively the network facilitates the circulation of resources, and enables people to make the contribution that they are capable of; ‘Clarification of aims and activities’ (adapted Weaver’s Triangle) tool to clarify how participants perspectives and activities diverge or converge over time; ‘Channels of Participation’ tool to assess how and were members interact in a network and look at changes over time; ‘Monitoring the edges’ to track independent networking stimulated but not through the centre