RE: How to Measure the Impact of Monitoring and Evaluation Work | Eval Forward

Dear AbuBakr,

Once I read your Email I felt I have to respond soon. It is a very interesting and very advanced topic "The impact of M&E, and Indicators for this Impact". I think it is much related to utility/ use of the outputs of M&E. Now in most cases sharing of the results of M&E is questionable even at the organizational level with exceptions of some very advanced learning organizations who make their reports available for the public. Again I think that our role in informing policy as consultants is having a good output of our work following the best consulting practices and working  with clients not for them bearing in mind the learning objective of M&E. The M&E people do not have direct authority on policy. This is what evaluation voluntary organizations (VOPEs) are trying to do through awareness and lobbying with Parliamentarians and I think they succeeded in some countries.

For evaluating the role of M&E I think it would not be easy to measure the contribution at the impact level, but going down to outcome and output level would be easier.

To give example of indicators:

  • # the number of downloads of an evaluation report or # the number of reaches/ views
  • % of M&E reports shared on websites of related organizations

Many others can be mentioned.

For agriculture, the research results in general not only evaluation need to be adapted to the field and be applied research not only scientific. The research in developing countries is weak and needs to be adapted to meet local needs and employed in the field.

At the end I say nothing is impossible and can be done even the Impact evaluation of Evaluations or a systematic Review.

The discussion could be very long

Thanks

Naser Qadous

Palestinian Evaluation Association
Agriculture/ Evaluation Expert