Better Evaluation

Synopsis

BetterEvaluation is a knowledge platform and global community. They envision a world of better evaluation, better decisions, and better results for people and the planet.

Running since 2012, their work on ‘evaluation’ includes the full range of monitoring and evaluation activities, frameworks, and systems, and includes evaluations of a project, program, policy, product, network, organisation, or strategy. It also includes evaluations that are known by different labels, such as impact assessment, impact measurement, or return on investment. BetterEvaluation engages with individuals, organisations, and networks to bring together knowledge about evaluation from different sectors, disciplines, regions, languages and contexts.

Area of accessibility

Several (strategies and methods to adapt evaluation to the specific needs of our target groups)

Why is it a good practice in the accessibility area?

Better Evaluation is, above all, a useful tool for trainers and youth workers to improve their evaluation methods and strategies, with resources available in several languages. As a platform it gathers information and guidance on more than 300 methods and processes used in evaluation, being a useful tool that can help trainers / youth workers to rethink:

The way they assess the achievements and involvement of their target groups in their activities.
The way they assess the outcome and impact of those activities.

We decided to highlight 3 methods that we consider particularly useful for youth work:

1. Participatory Evaluation: An valuation method that places stakeholders in the center of the evaluation process, giving them the opportunity to adapt the assessment to their specific needs, transforming it into a tool to help participants achieve their goals rather than to demotivate them (as is often the case in formal education settings). Campilan (2000) indicates that participatory evaluation is distinguished from the conventional approach in five key ways:

Why the evaluation is being done
How evaluation is done
Who is doing the evaluating
What is being evaluated
For whom evaluation is being done

The advantages of doing participatory evaluation are:

Identify locally relevant evaluation questions
Improve accuracy and relevance of reports
Establish and explain causality
Improve program performance
Empower participants
Build capacity
Develop leaders and build teams
Sustain organizational learning and growth

2. World cafe – A methodology for hosting group dialogue which emphasizes the power of simple conversation in considering relevant questions and themes.

The metaphor of a real-life café is used: in a world café session, participants – of any number – are encouraged to take part in a collaborative conversation within an environment typically modeled after such a café (i.e. a room furnished with small tables, tablecloth, light music, flowers, refreshments, etc). As participants rotate between tables over the course of a session, individual conversations build off one and other, and ideas and issues “cross-pollinate”. In doing so, the collective intelligence, focus, and experiences of the group are brought to bear on a particular issue or issues with a collective sense of purpose and direction.

3. Impact evaluation – A methodology for youth workers to evaluate their own work. An impact evaluation provides information about the impacts produced by an intervention.

The intervention might be a small project, a large programme, a collection of activities, or a policy. An impact evaluation can be undertaken to improve or reorient an intervention (i.e., for formative purposes) or to inform decisions about whether to continue, discontinue, replicate or scale up an intervention (i.e., for summative purposes).

Impact evaluation might be appropriate when there is a need to understand the impacts that have been produced. It might not be appropriate when the priority at this stage is to understand and improve the quality of the implementation.

Promoting Organization

GEI – Global Evaluation Initiative

GEI is a global network of organizations and experts supporting country governments to strengthen monitoring, evaluation, and the use of evidence in their countries.

You can follow them on…

https://www.betterevaluation.org/

https://www.betterevaluation.org/methods-approaches/themes/impact-evaluation

https://www.betterevaluation.org/methods-approaches/methods/world-cafe

https://www.betterevaluation.org/methods-approaches/approaches/participatory-evaluation