Interesting discussion, and to start with, I think that the choice of quantitative or qualitative methods or both is in principle determined by your professional background. The tendency of evaluators coming from professions such as economics, engineering or similar is to use quantitative methods, while evaluators from humanitarian fields use qualitative methods. The evaluation of programmes must overcome these tendencies and effectively use mixed methods in order to demonstrate changes and progress made by programmes from both approaches.
One challenge, for example, is the design of indicators that are more qualitative, which are more difficult to construct, but are increasingly necessary as they allow information to be obtained related to the feelings and non-quantifiable effects of and on the population participating in the programmes.
RE: How are mixed methods used in programme evaluation?
Interesting discussion, and to start with, I think that the choice of quantitative or qualitative methods or both is in principle determined by your professional background. The tendency of evaluators coming from professions such as economics, engineering or similar is to use quantitative methods, while evaluators from humanitarian fields use qualitative methods. The evaluation of programmes must overcome these tendencies and effectively use mixed methods in order to demonstrate changes and progress made by programmes from both approaches.
One challenge, for example, is the design of indicators that are more qualitative, which are more difficult to construct, but are increasingly necessary as they allow information to be obtained related to the feelings and non-quantifiable effects of and on the population participating in the programmes.
[Translated from Spanish]