Davos is here again
Duncan Green summarises Oxfam’s new report.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it: Quality in WASH responses
As we launch our WASH Impact Series, Oxfam’s Quality Assurance Project Manager, James Brown introduces a new global initiative to help organisations focus on achieving quality in humanitarian WASH responses. What would a quality assurance system for humanitarian WASH programming look like? That’s the question being explored by the Quality Assurance and Accountability Project, a Global WASH Cluster initiative led …
DAC criteria: The hand that rocks the cradle
Stephen Porter gives his thoughts on the OECD’s latest consultation on the revision of the Development Assistance Committee’s evaluation criteria (DAC criteria). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has launched a consultation on revising the Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) evaluation criteria through a survey. The DAC criteria are important because they inform how international development is undertaken within commitments …
Leaving no one behind in our evaluation practice
Stephen Porter reflects on the importance of understanding why people are left behind in development practice and acknowledging what goes unseen and unsaid in evaluations. Leave no one behind is a call for action within the Sustainable Development Goals. The Goals are meant to be met for all people, especially groups who are marginalized and vulnerable. In the Sustainable Development …
Improving data quality with digital data collection
Emily Tomkys Valteri, Alexia Pretari and Simone Lombardini share practical tips to help improve quality in survey data collection, and introduce the latest case study in the ‘Going Digital’ series. Sometimes survey data doesn’t add up: two household members are married to each other and yet have different marital statuses, consent statements have not been fully read, percentages of income …
Accommodating uncertainty in advocacy and campaign evaluation
Jim Coe and Rhonda Schlangen, experienced advocacy evaluators, discuss the evolving challenge of monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning in the context of influencing work. Over the last couple of decades, there has been a seismic shift in thinking about evaluating influencing work. As we argue here, we need to think critically about where we’ve got to and how to manage …
Reflecting on the use of qualitative comparative analysis
Guest blog by Johannes Meuer, Anne Ellersiek, Daniel Shephard and Christian Rupietta – the evaluation team who undertook a meta review of Oxfam’s effectiveness reviews of policy influence, citizens voice and good governance initiatives. During the last few years, there has been increasing interest in using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as an alternative method for evaluation of policy change or advocacy …
Technical learning from the meta-analysis of women’s empowerment projects
Kristen McCollum, consultant at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), shares with us the learning from Oxfam’s meta-analyses on women’s empowerment. When we first decided to conduct a meta-analysis on women’s empowerment Effectiveness Reviews (ERs), the idea was to go where no impact evaluation had gone before. While the Effectiveness Reviews give us a rigorous measurement of the impact …
Follow the money: calculating net aid flows
What percentage of aid reaches the intended recipient country? Our methodology tool can be used to calculate this, but more aid data transparency is needed. Aid data transparency just got a major boost from the UK Department for International Development (DFID). Its new policy document, ‘Open aid, open societies: A vision for a transparent world’ reaffirms the agency’s requirement that …