Monitoring and Evaluation

Step 3: Collect the information

The next step in designing an evaluation approach is to determine the activities that will allow you to gather the answers to the questions. Typical activities for gathering information to evaluate a project are:

• Surveys: A good way of getting information from many and sometimes distant respondents. The questions of your survey can be (some of) your evaluations questions, but they may need to be tailored to the respondents. The selection of the respondent should be done with care. You can do a survey before and after the project, to see how the situation has changed.
• Interviews: The choice of who you will interview is important. Also prepare a list of questions for each respondent specifically.
• Focus groups discussions: Once more, the selection of the persons to invite to a group discussion has to be made carefully, so your focus group is representative of the target group. The time and the place you choose to meet the respondents are also important. 
• Analysing existing reports (for instance your own monitoring reports) or studying existing statistics.
• You get the best result when you combine several methods. You could for example organise focus group discussions with beneficiaries, hold evaluation interviews to some key stakeholders, visit places where changes can be observed, organise workshops with the staff involved in the initiative.
• Watch the video below to understand more about data collection methods and sampling:

The Tiny Toolbox lists information gathering methods that allow you to measure change, without a baseline survey (a measurement before your project took place).