Archive for March, 2011

Behavioral economics and randomized trials: trumpeted, attacked and parried

Friday, March 25th, 2011

This is the title of a blog posting by Chris Blattman, which points to and comments on a debate  in the Boston Review, March/April 2011 The focus of the debate is an article by Rachel Glennerster and Michael Kremer, titled Small Changes, Big Results:  Behavioral Economics at Work in Poor Countries "Behavioral ...

Making Evaluations Matter: a Practical Guide for Evaluators.

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

Authors: Cecile Kusters with Simone van Vugt, Seerp Wigboldus, Bob Williams and Jim Woodhill. 2011 “Too often evaluations are shelved, with very little being done to bring about change within organisations that requested the evaluation in the first place. This guide will explain how you can make your ...

Social Return On Investment: A practical guide for the development cooperation sector

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011

by Jan Brouwers, Ester Prins and Menno Salverda (2010) , Utrecht, Context International Cooperation / Creative Commons, 60pp, ISBN 978-90-77526-06-4.  Available free online Description "Related to Cost Benefit Analyses and Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation is a new methodology called SROI; Social Return On Investment. As the term implies ...

Common Needs Assessments and humanitarian action

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

by Richard Garfield, with Courtney Blake, Patrice Chatainger and Sandie Walton-Ellery. HPN Network Paper No.69, January 2011 "Five years ago, the field of needs assessments resembled a tower of Babel. Each agency had its own unproven survey forms and made their own assessments based on little field-based information. ...

Collective Impact

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

by John Kania and Mark Kramer, Standford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011. Available online and as pdf The same work has also been the subject of a New York Times article "Coming Together to Give Schools a Boost By DAVID BORNSTEIN March 7, 2011.  And further material is also available ...

SLEvaluationAssoc 2011 International Conference in Colombo

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

Date: 8-9 June Venue: Colombo, Sri Lanka The Sri Lanka Evaluation Association (SLEvA) will hold the SLEvA 2011 International Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on 8-9 June. The conference will be preceded by pre conference professional development workshops conducted by leading professionals in the field as well as professionals working ...

Critical Study Of The Logical Framework Approach In The Basque Country

Tuesday, March 15th, 2011

By ECODE, Bilbao, March 2011 Full text available in Spanish and in English BACKGROUND AND PRESENTATION "Since 1999 ECODE has been working on supporting the management of Development Cooperation interventions in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) by the multiple agents that are involved in this sector, including public administrations, Development NGOs and organisations ...

Beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): Changing norms and meeting targets

Monday, March 14th, 2011

Sussex Development Lecture, 10 March, by David Hulme Text summary below is from IDS. A PowerPoint version of the same argument is also available from IDS. [RD's Comments can be found at the end of the text summary] "David Hulme examined the impact of the MDGs, arguing that their replacement could not ...

USAID Evaluation Policy

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

14 pages. Available as pdf. Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning , January 19th, 2011 Contents: 1. Context; 2. Purposes of Evaluation; 3. Basic Organizational Roles and Responsibilities; 4. Evaluation Practices; 5. Evaluation Requirements; 6. Conclusion. Annex: Criteria to Ensure the Quality of the Evaluation Report

Value for money: A list

Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Hopefully, the start of a short but useful bibliography, listed in chronological order. Please suggest additional documents by using the Comment facility below.  If you have ideas on how Value for Money can be clearly defined and usefully measured please also use the Comment facility below.. For the Editor's own suggestion, go ...