Impact Monitoring Guidelines
Overview
The Impact Monitoring Group of Energising Development has developed recommendations for sound impact assessments.
We recommend to:
- use the recommended list of indicators
- conduct baseline studies before project intervention and impact studies after households, social infrastructure or SMEs received access to modern energy
- use a theory based approach by applying the result chain for developing the study design
- use a mixed methods approach: the logic of the comparative advantages of methods: i.e. the mix of quantitative (standardised household interviews) and qualitative methods (open / semi-structured interviews with key persons and households or focus group discussions)
- include, wherever possible, control groups (households which resemble those households with access to modern energy with the exception of this access) into your baseline and impact study
- consider research ethics
The following tables show in more detail typical steps for baseline and impact studies, which we furthermore recommend and support.
Introduction
Development interventions are executed with the ultimate aim of changing the living situation in less developed countries. What is often thoroughly investigated are the inputs to a development intervention and its immediate outputs - how much money is spent, how many children are vaccinated, business trainings conducted or latrines installed. Assessing the impacts of a development intervention though - the aforementioned amelioration of living standards that can be attributed to a particular intervention - is part of a movement towards evidence-based development policy making and accountability. The central question to all impact evaluations "What is the causal effect of a programme on the variable of interest?" can be applied to various policy contexts.
Initial but crucial steps to every evaluation is the establishment of
- questions to be answered within the scope of the given evaluation;
- the theory of change, depicting how, in theory, the intervention is envisaged to achieve results;
- the result chain;
- hypothesis to be tested by the evaluation;
- performance indicators.
Taken together, the evaluators will hereby arrive at the specific questions to be phrased by the evaluation. Ideally, this will occur in the planning phase of the development intervention, thereby linking implementation and evaluation closely.
Preparation
| Tasks | Materials/ Support | Library |
| Draft Terms of Reference for Consultants / Enumerators |
|
ToR Consultants: |
| Selection of Consultant / Enumerators |
|
|
| Study documents and statistics on national development goals and policies, national sector goals and policies, BMZ goals and concept for the partner country |
|
|
|
Developing of Results Chains/ Indicators (consider undesired side effects being positive or negative) |
Cooking:
| |
| Developing of Questionnaires, interview guidelines, PRA tools (MAPP), observation criteria and other tools (catalogue of methods) | ||
| Sampling/ Selection target Group |
|
|
| Training of Supervisors and Enumerators/ Pretesting |
|
|
Implementation
| Task | Materials/ Support | Library |
| Logistics | Checklist on how to implement HH Interviews |
|
| Conducting Interviews |
| |
| Data entry |
Data Analysis / Reporting
| Task | Materials/ Support | Library |
| Data analysis |
| |
| Data interpretation – in exchange with the project team (in a workshop) |
|
|
| Report writing (+ summary writing) |
|
|
|
Handover of raw data |
|
Further Information
