Edited by Stephen Bell and Peter Aggleton. Routledge 2016. View on Google Books
“interpretive researchers thus attempt to understand phenomena through accessing the meanings participants assign to them”
“...interpretive and ethnographic approaches are side-lined in much contemporary evaluation work and current monitoring and evaluation practice remains heavily influenced by more positivist approaches”
“attribution is not the only purpose of impact evaluation”
“Lack of familiarity with qualitative approaches by programme staff and donor agencies also influences the preferences for for quantitative methods in monitoring and evaluation work”
Contents
1. Interpretive and Ethnographic Perspectives – Alternative Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation Practice
2. The Political Economy of Evidence: Personal Reflections on the Value of the Interpretive Tradition and its Methods
3. Measurement, Modification and Transferability: Evidential Challenges in the Evaluation of Complex Interventions
4. What Really Works? Understanding the Role of ‘Local Knowledges’ in the Monitoring and Evaluation of a Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Project in Kenya
PART 2: Programme Design 5. Permissions, Vacations and Periods of Self-regulation: Using Consumer Insight to Improve HIV Treatment Adherence in Four Central American Countries
6. Generating Local Knowledge: A Role for Ethnography in Evidence-based Programme Design for Social Development
7. Interpretation, Context and Time: An Ethnographically Inspired Approach to Strategy Development for Tuberculosis Control in Odisha, India
8. Designing Health and Leadership Programmes for Young Vulnerable Women Using Participatory Ethnographic Research in Freetown, Sierra Leone
Part 3: Monitoring Processes
9. Using Social Mapping Techniques to Guide Programme Redesign in the Tingim Laip HIV Prevention and Care Project in Papua New Guinea
10. Pathways to Impact: New Approaches to Monitoring and Improving Volunteering for Sustainable Environmental Management
11. Ethnographic Process Evaluation: A Case Study of an HIV Prevention Programme with Injecting Drug Users in the USA
12. Using the Reality Check Approach to Shape Quantitative Findings: Experience from Mixed Method Evaluations in Ghana and Nepal
Part 4: Understanding Impact and Change
13. Innovation in Evaluation: Using SenseMaker to Assess the Inclusion of Smallholder Farmers in Modern Markets
14. The Use of the Rapid PEER Approach for the Evaluation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes
15. Using Interpretive Research to Make Quantitative Evaluation More Effective: Oxfam’s Experience in Pakistan and Zimbabwe
16. Can Qualitative Research Rigorously Evaluate Programme Impact? Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Adolescent Sexual Health Programme in Tanzania
Rick Davies Comment: [Though this may reflect my reading biases…]It seems like this strand of thinking has not been in the forefront of M&E attention for a long time (i.e. maybe since the 1990s – early 2000’s) so it is good to see this new collection of papers, by a large collection of both old and new faces (33 in all).
