Thank you, Nick Maunder, for bringing this up. The Covid-19 pandemic put to test every evaluator on how innovative and resilient one can be. My president’s directive to work from home, reached us when we are in the process of data collection in the field. This was an outcome harvesting. We had a replanning meeting over the night and decided to prioritize the focus group interviews (the stories) to avoid being locked down away from our homes. Focus group discussions would have been challenging to collect through skypes or telephone calls. The storytellers (FGD) are mostly community members. They have challenges in accessing bundles, telephones, internet, and most other forms of communication.
The rest of the data from the key informants (substantiating) was collected through skype meeting, telephone calls and WhatsApp calls. It was not easy as put, but eventually, we were happy with the effort we put and the data collected.
Therefore, the evaluators need to continually remind themselves on what the goal of a particular evaluation is. And how best they can gather the data.
RE: How do we adapt our evaluation approach to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic?
Thank you, Nick Maunder, for bringing this up. The Covid-19 pandemic put to test every evaluator on how innovative and resilient one can be. My president’s directive to work from home, reached us when we are in the process of data collection in the field. This was an outcome harvesting. We had a replanning meeting over the night and decided to prioritize the focus group interviews (the stories) to avoid being locked down away from our homes. Focus group discussions would have been challenging to collect through skypes or telephone calls. The storytellers (FGD) are mostly community members. They have challenges in accessing bundles, telephones, internet, and most other forms of communication.
The rest of the data from the key informants (substantiating) was collected through skype meeting, telephone calls and WhatsApp calls. It was not easy as put, but eventually, we were happy with the effort we put and the data collected.
Therefore, the evaluators need to continually remind themselves on what the goal of a particular evaluation is. And how best they can gather the data.