Timely evaluation in international development

ABSTRACT

Impact and process evaluations are increasingly used in international development; however they are generally retrospective in outlook. A more timely approach to evaluation aims to identify necessary, feasible and effective changes during a programme or intervention’s lifetime. This paper aims to identify, categorise, describe and critically appraise methods to support more timely evaluation in international development. Potential methods were identified through scoping seminar, public symposium, targeted review of the literature, and the authors’ own experiences and opinions. Findings from the different data sources were reviewed collectively by the author group and triangulated to develop an analytical framework. We identified four purposes of timely evaluation for international development, and critiqued the use of approaches against four dimensions of timeliness and flexibility. Whilst we found significant interest in more timely approaches to evaluation in international development, there was a dearth of published empirical evidence upon which to base strong recommendations. There is significant potential for timely evaluation to improve international development outcomes. New approaches to mixing and adapting existing methods, together with new technologies offer increased potential. Research is needed to provide an empirical evidence base upon which to further develop the application, across sectors and contexts, of timely evaluation in international development.

KEYWORDS:

• Outcome evaluation
• impact evaluation
• adaptive learning
• programme improvement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department for International Development [203569].

Notes on contributors

Jayne Webster

Jayne Webster is Professor of International Health and Evaluation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a focus on mixed methods approaches to evaluating the delivery of public health interventions.

Josephine Exley

Josephine Exley is a research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Her work focuses on health services research, with a particular interest in evaluation and evidence synthesis.

James Copestake

James Copestake is Professor of International Development at the University of Bath, with a particular interest in the political economy of development finance and its evaluation.

Rick Davies

Rick Davies is an independent Monitoring and Evaluation Consultant, based in Cambridge, U.K.

James Hargreaves

James Hargreaves is Professor in Epidemiology and Evaluation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a focus on social epidemiology and public health evaluation. James specialise in quantitative and mixed-method research on how interventions and policies determined outside the public health sector influence infectious diseases and social inequalities in these.