Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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Ask the sector specialist

Ask the Monitoring & Evaluation (M & E) Specialist

Monitoring & Evaluation specialist Paul Crawford recently answered ADG user's questions on M&E issues.

Read the interesting Q&A in the forum

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Monitoring & Evaluation Methodologies

Impact evaluation: ODE briefing note (pdf 35kb)

This Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) paper briefly discusses impact evaluations for aid initiatives - giving a definition, outlining key methods used, and costs/benefits.

This briefing note details how an impact evaluation considers not only traditional evaluation criteria (objectives, outputs and outcomes-oriented), but focuses more on the credible examination of impact (and higher order outcomes) of aid initiatives.

Impact evaluations utilise either quantitative or qualitative methods or a combination of both. For example, ADB and World Bank favour quantitative techniques with many in NGO communities preferring qualitative techniques.

These types of evaluations require more data collection (often structured, quantitative), but help to support decisions regarding up-scaling/approach changes, and also substantiate the impact of initiatives (required by AusAID performance reporting).

 

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