CDI webinar series on methods for theory-based evaluation
Online
Sobre el evento
During the gLocal week, the Centre for Development Impact (CDI) organises a series of free, online one-hour webinars about various impact evaluation methods within a theory-based evaluation approach. These will be five daily, stand-alone sessions. Participants will be introduced to the strengths and weaknesses of several novel methods that can be used within a theory-based approach to impact evaluation. The webinars will cover methods to explore causal patterns in small-N data sets (Qualitative Comparative Analysis), rigorous causal inference (Process Tracing, Realist evaluation), and methods to increase learning and empowerment (Contribution Analysis, Participatory MEL).
Through these webinars, CDI wants to channel the focus in impact evaluation design towards clarifying, verifying, and assessing the importance of claims about the contribution to outcomes and impact. Contribution Analysis provides a step-wise process of iterative reflection about the theory of change and the critical assumptions (or 'causal hotspot') within it, with information derived from a wide range of methods combined into an appropriate interlinked research design.
This theory-based approach to impact evaluation responds to the demand of policymaker and funders that need to assess the effectiveness of support interventions with appropriate indicators, indicative of relevance and additionality of projects in relation to other actors and factors that influence the change processes.
Also, it helps development organisations that increasingly need complexity-aware, learning-based approaches to design and drive their monitoring and evaluation systems. Participatory MEL enables practitioners to better understand how change actually happens and impact is achieved in real-time in complex social change contexts – in order to use M&E to fuel impact. The different methods respond to growing awareness of the need for downward accountability and supporting greater feedback from the people affected by the intervention and those designing and funding them.
The webinars present several key modules of the professional courses we organise in the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the University of East Anglia (UEA) on impact evaluation, and benefiting from the expertise of the global M&E consultancy firm ITAD. Since 2014, these three partners work together in the Centre for Development Impact - - http:/www.cdimpact.org.
Through these webinars, CDI wants to channel the focus in impact evaluation design towards clarifying, verifying, and assessing the importance of claims about the contribution to outcomes and impact. Contribution Analysis provides a step-wise process of iterative reflection about the theory of change and the critical assumptions (or 'causal hotspot') within it, with information derived from a wide range of methods combined into an appropriate interlinked research design.
This theory-based approach to impact evaluation responds to the demand of policymaker and funders that need to assess the effectiveness of support interventions with appropriate indicators, indicative of relevance and additionality of projects in relation to other actors and factors that influence the change processes.
Also, it helps development organisations that increasingly need complexity-aware, learning-based approaches to design and drive their monitoring and evaluation systems. Participatory MEL enables practitioners to better understand how change actually happens and impact is achieved in real-time in complex social change contexts – in order to use M&E to fuel impact. The different methods respond to growing awareness of the need for downward accountability and supporting greater feedback from the people affected by the intervention and those designing and funding them.
The webinars present several key modules of the professional courses we organise in the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the University of East Anglia (UEA) on impact evaluation, and benefiting from the expertise of the global M&E consultancy firm ITAD. Since 2014, these three partners work together in the Centre for Development Impact - - http:/www.cdimpact.org.
Sesión
Conferencia
31 de Mayo, 2021
13:00 PM - 14:00 PM
Contribution Analysis provides a step-wise process of iterative reflection about the theory of change and the critical assumptions (or 'causal hotspot') within it, with information derived from a wide range of methods combined into an appropriate interlinked research design.
The webinar will introduce the approach, discuss strengths and weaknesses, and illustrate it with an example where various qualitative and quantitative approaches are combined in a mixed-method design.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Giel Ton | Dr | Giel Ton is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and Director of the Centre for Development Impact. He specializes in the design of mixed-methods impact evaluations in agricultural value chains and private-sector development and applies Contribution Analysis as an overarching approach of theory-based evaluation. Contribution Analysis helps to identify the hot-spots for additional research needed to verify critical assumptions in the theory of change. He encourages the critical reflection on methods, anticipating the threats to validity to the type of inferences associated with a particular research design. He is particularly interested in research designs that integrate methods for pattern detection in data sets (e.g. regressions, qualitative comparative analysis) and in-depth causal explanation (e.g. process tracing, realist evaluation). |
Conferencia
1 ° de Junio, 2021
13:00 PM - 14:00 PM
This session will provide participants with an overview of how best to evaluate complex interventions and deal with ‘small n’ evaluation scenarios. We first rehearse the challenges of conducting evaluations in these contexts and then discuss qualitative and participatory approaches that partially respond to these so-called ‘small n methods’ as an alternative to experimental approaches to establishing causation. We explore the role that these evaluations can have for theory- testing, theory- building, and explaining outcomes.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Maren Duvendack | Dr | Maren Duvendack has a PhD in development economics from the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK. Her key research areas cover applied micro-econometrics, impact evaluation, systematic reviews and meta-analysis, microfinance, replication and reproduction of quantitative analyses as well as research ethics. After completing her PhD she joined the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC as a Postdoctoral Fellow before joining the Overseas Development Institute in London as a Research Fellow in evaluation and impact assessment. She is now a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Development at the University of East Anglia where she is mainly teaching on the MSc Impact Evaluation for International Development. Maren has extensively worked on microfinance impact evaluations in India and Bangladesh. She is particularly interested in the link between microfinance, empowerment and reproductive health. She has more recently worked on quantitative impact evaluations for IFAD, DFAT (formerly AusAid), the World Food Programme and the Gates Foundation on a range of themes across South Asia and East Africa. Maren also completed a number of systematic reviews for DFID and for 3ie on microfinance, payments-by-results as well as on the link between government policies and income inequalities. |
Conferencia
2 de junio, 2021
13:00 PM - 14:00 PM
This session will introduce participants to a number of tools and approach to reflect on the different roles that stakeholder groups play in shaping policy with evidence. The presentation will encourage participants to consider how contexts, power and political interests and incentive structures influence the ways in which actors engage with and act upon evidence. We will reflect on the intersecting roles that different stakeholders play in the generation and use of evidence and the diverse capacities that are needed to engage with different audiences and frame messages to resonate with policy conversations and priorities. These insights will support participants to reflect upon the range of causal pathways to shape policy with evidence and challenge their assumptions of how change happens.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Louise Clark | Dr | Louise has worked as a monitoring, evaluation and learning professional for the past 10 years, in which time she has worked for both Oxfam America and Action Aid International and as an independent evaluator. Her work involves all stages in the MEL cycle, from the strategic design of MEL frameworks and approaches, creating MEL processes and products, supporting monitoring and reporting to managing evaluations and facilitating spaces for reflection and learning. She has strong facilitation skills with particular interest in Theory of Change as a tool to build shared ownership of project outcomes and to challenge assumptions about how change happens to support learning and improvement. She also has considerable experience in managing project evaluations, having commissioned numerous evaluations for INGOs as well as designing and implementing fieldwork as an independent consultant. |
Conferencia
3 de junio, 2021
13:00 PM - 14:00 PM
This session will introduce participants to new methodological opportunities for improving M&E frameworks towards a participatory and systemic learning practice. A range of innovative participatory methods will be shared, including systemic, visual and narrative methods. The session will enable participants to reflect on MEL design and application of methods to learn about how change happens starting with the lived experiences of those engaged directly in the change processes.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Marina Apgar | Dr | Marina Apgar is a human ecologist with 20 years experience working directly with marginalised communities in international development across the research-practice divide supporting locally defined development pathways. She has worked extensively with indigenous peoples in Latin America, and collaborated with the Guna people of Panama during her doctoral research that focused on the social and cultural processes that support adaptive capacity for endogenous development of their biocultural territory. Throughout her work, Marina uses a systems approach to participatory action research and is passionate about understanding and facilitating the creative space between research processes and development outcomes through engaging in complex adaptive systems to support emergence. |
| Steff Deprez | Mr | For over 20 years, I have supported international development programmes at national, regional and global levels in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe, including long-term assignments in Zimbabwe (VVOB), Indonesia (Rikolto Indonesia) and Belgium (Rikolto International). My work has centered around providing technical and strategic guidance to organisations for the design of learning-oriented M&E systems for social change and sustainable development initiatives, particularly in the areas of education, value chain development, inclusive business, gender equality and women & youth empowerment. As a development practitioner I have always been intrigued and passionate about understanding complex change processes and how they can inform development strategies and initiatives. My work is thus inspired by the principles of complexity thinking and practical actor-centered approaches. For over two decades I have been using and facilitating others to use, SenseMaker, Outcome Mapping, Outcome Harvesting and Theory of Change. In 2017, I co-founded Voices That Count, a group of expert practitioners supporting not-for-profit, public, academic and corporate organisations to understand and communicate about their social impact, and to generate actionable insights through narrative monitoring and sensemaking approaches. I am a board member and steward of the Outcome Mapping Learning Community, an accredited SenseMaker Practitioner (Cognitive Edge) and a licensed SenseMaker Designer (Cynefin Centre). I hold an M.Sc in Environmental Management & Technology (University of Leuven, Belgium) and a M.Ed in Leadership & Management (Rhodes University, South Africa). |
Conferencia
4 de junio, 2021
13:00 PM - 14:00 PM
How does change happen, for who and under what circumstances and why, these are the questions that realist evaluation aims to answer. This session will introduce participants to the use of realist synthesis to help develop a realist evaluation of interventions. Using an example of a realist synthesis and evaluation of participatory action research for innovation, it will take participants through how to shape a realist review of the literature to develop realist program theories and use these theories to evaluate how their intervention is contributing to change. It will highlight the importance of setting boundaries in your realist evaluation work and paying specific attention to cases in which the intervention does not work.
Presentador/a
| Nombre | Título | Biografía |
|---|---|---|
| Mieke Snijder | Dr | Mieke Snijder, has over a decade of experience designing and implementing methodologies to evaluate complex wellbeing and development interventions with Aboriginal communities and marginalised young people. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales (Australia) in which she investigated the tensions between the use of participatory approaches and evaluation of complex community-based interventions with three Australian Aboriginal communities. She is currently a postdoc in evaluation of complex interventions in the participation, inclusion and social change cluster at IDS. Where she is working on the monitoring, evaluation and learning of two large-scale research for development programmes. She uses realist evaluation methods to evaluate participatory and co-produced research to address complex issues such as the worst forms of child labour in Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar and urban disaster risk in Ecuador, Kenya, Turkey and Nepal. |