Writing Summaries for Evaluation Reports

Last year I attended a course on "Using Evidence for Policy and Practice" presented by Philip Davies from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation [3ie]. I found his guidelines for what should go into the 1:3:25 summaries most helpful. Here they are:

The full course material is available on the website of the African Evidence Network's Website. Here. 

What I'm up to at the 2015 SAMEA Conference

The SAMEA conference is happening from 12 to 16 October and I'm looking forward to it. 


Since January, I've had to temporarily downscale my professional involvement in the M&E and Educational networks and I had to neglect this little blog a bit because of a second long term development project I took on in January 2015. The project has lovely brown eyes, an infectious laugh and goes by the name of Clarissa. I'm happy to report that no major clashes with the first development project, (Named Ruan) has so far occurred, but its been a bit of an adjustment to balance work, and volunteering, and life in general. 


So what am I up to  at the conference?
I'll be tweeting from @benitaw if you are interested in my perspective of the conference. I will also attend an IOCE stand at the conference, aiming to promote the VOPE Institutional Capacity Toolkit which my consultancy developed under the EvalPartners leadership of Jennifer Bisgard, Patricia Rogers, Jim Rugh, and Matt Galen. This is an online toolkit full of helpful resources aimed to equip VOPEs (Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluation) to become more accountable and more active. 

Then, I'll be teaming up with Cara Waller (from CLEAR) and Donna Podems (from OtherWise) in a session for African VOPEs  on Friday 16th October. This is a ‘world-café’ style event, from 10 –11:30am, to be held as a joint ‘Made in Africa’ and ‘Discussing the Professionalisation of Evaluation and Evaluators’ stream session.  The aim of the session is to provide a space for those involved with VOPEs in the region (and those with an interest in strengthening African VOPEs) to come together to discuss current topics around building quality supply and generating demand for evaluation in contextually-specific ways. So please come and chat all things VOPE on the day!

Good luck to my colleague Fazeela Hoosen and the rest of the SAMEA board on hosting this year's conference with the DPME and the PSC. I know (and boy.... do I know) it is very hard work. So thanks in advance for all of the hours you are putting in, to make this event happen. 

My consultancy is one year old so I celebrated by making my first Infographic!

True Confessions of an Economic Evaluation Phobic

You know how the forces at work in the universe sometimes conspire and confronts you with a persistent nudge... over an over again? Well this week's nudge was "You know nothing about economic evaluation... do something about it - Other than ignoring it".

Words like "cost-benefit analysis, cost-efficiency analysis, cost-utility analysis"... actually anything with the word "cost" or "expenditure" in it... makes me nervous. So my usual strategy is to ignore the "Efficiency" criterion suggested by the OECD DAC, or I start fidgeting around for the contact details of one of my economist friends, and pass the job along. I have even managed to be part of a team doing a Public Expenditure Tracking Survey without touching the "Expenditure" side of the data.

But then I found these two resources that helped me to start to make a little bit more sense of it all. They are:

The South African Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation's Guideline on Economic Evaluation  At least it starts to explain the very many different kinds of economic evaluation you should consider if you work within the context of South Africa's National Evaluation Policy Framework.


And then this. 

A free ebook by Julian King that presents a short theory for helping to answer the question "Does XYZ deliver good (enough) value for investment?" - Essentially the question any evaluator is supposed to help answer.

So, now, there is one more topic on my ever expanding reading list! If there is a "Bible" of economic evaluation, let me have the reference, ok?

What if, mid career as a researcher, you become interested in Evaluation?

An old classmate, that took the market research route after completing her Research Psych Master's Degree, asked me for a couple of references to check out if she wanted to develop her evaluation knowledge and skills. What came to mind is the following professional development resources. I'm sure there's many more easily accessible ones, but this is a good start for a list!

• If you are willing to spend some time learning from online lectures, try out any of the free online courses developed by EvalPartners, Rockefeller and the IOCE. New entrants allowed in January, March and September of each year, and learning is totally self-paced.  They are certified.
• If you are looking for less intense professional development - Why not check out the American Evaluation Association's Coffee Break Webinars? (I think you do have to be an AEA member though!)
• If you are looking for something to read about any evaluation method, approach, tool or task, check out Better Evaluation. Subscribe to their blog and their twitter stream to get handy little tips. An amazing resource made available totally free!
• Do you only have time for a short email or blog every now and again? Sign up for the American Evaluation Association Tip-a-Day blog/ emails or check out the collection of Evaluation Blogs curated at EvalCentral
•  If you are looking for an accredited online course, try out the Claremont E-learning options. They usually have bursaries available for Developing Country Evaluators. 
• What are the two Evaluation books I suggest you should read first? Utilization Focused Evaluation  - Michael Quinn Patton and Purposeful Programme Theory - Sue Funnell & Patricia Rogers
• If you are planning to work in the M&E of Government programmes in South Africa, you have to be familiar with The South African Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation's National Evaluation Policy Framework, and their guidelines.