Monitoring and Evaluation

Step 2: Identify the information you need

Evaluation is a research or an investigation exercise: you want to find out about the effects of your project. For such a research you need to define clearly which questions you want your research to answer. Often these questions relate to the indicators, metrics, output and outcome that you have planned. Watch the video below to understand the importance of measuring what matters:

Once you know your evaluation questions, you can think about the information (the data) that you will need to gather in order to answer these questions.

You may need some clear figures (quantitative data) and/or reliable information about the quality of certain results (qualitative data), and preferably both. Evaluation questions could for example be:

• Did we achieve the expected result of reaching 200 school children with our activities?
• Did women in our community raise their income with 10% after the project?
• How many more adults in the community know about the way Hiv/AIDS is spread?
• Are the results and costs of the project in balance?

Try to make these questions as specific and measurable as possible (SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timebound). It is often most interesting to not only evaluate how many people you reached (output), but especially if the project changed something for the people reached (outcome). Maybe there were 100 women in your training on marketing, instead of the expected 50. However, if this did not result in them earning more income, you can ask yourself if the project was successful.