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Monitoring strategy And data collection

Module 5: Monitoring tools

5.4 Outcome harvesting

If relationships of cause and effect are not clear, the change capturing tool offers a participatory approach to identify, formulate, verify, analyse and interpret ‘outcomes’. It is often used as an evaluation tool, but can also be a useful monitoring tool
Why use it? It allows you to work backwards from collecting evidence of what has changed in your programming context, determining whether and how the intervention contributed to these changes.

This tool is most useful at the implementation, monitoring and adaptation stage. If used for baseline or context analysis, it is also useful at the design stage. It is important to be aware that data collection methods should be considered at design stage in order to ensure the right methods have been selected for what the tool seeks to measure. It can be used together with:

1.1 Understanding the VE challenge

1.4 Prioritisation of factors

2.2 Articulating change

4.3 Prioritising indicators

5.2 Context monitoring (timeline) tool

5.3 PVE capturing tool

Figure 22: PVE change significance matrix
Six steps of outcome harvesting

Design the outcome harvest:

1

Identify the primary users of the M&E findings. Based on this, users and evaluators agree what needs to be known and develop questions to guide the outcome harvesting. Example: If a programme focused on developing National Action Plans, a useful harvesting question could be: “How did the government change its PVE- related policies to reflect the concerns of communities affected by VE?”.

Review documentation and draft outcome descriptions:

2

Review documentation and draft outcome descriptions: From reports, former evaluations, press releases and other documents, identify outcomes (i.e. changes in individuals, groups, communities, organisations, institutions) and what the intervention did to contribute to them. Look at: Behaviours: Change in how officials are dealing with complaints or public commitments made to the PVE National Action Plan or related policies. Relationships: Change in how local/national government interact on PVE or how local law enforcement agencies engage with local communities. Action: How marginalised communities have been involved in PVE decision-making. Policy: If new national PVE action plans/strategy or local PVE plans have been adopted. Practice: If community consultation mechanisms on PVE have been established.

Engage with informants in formulating outcome descriptions:

3

M&E staff/evaluators engage directly with respondents to review the outcome descriptions based on the document review, and to identify and formulate additional changes.

Substantiate:

4

M&E staff/evaluators and programme team and partners review the final outcomes and select those to be verified to increase the accuracy and credibility of the findings. Here, it is recommended to get external expertise to help assess whether the change took place and the programme’s contribution.

Analyse and interpret outcome findings:

5

Classify and rank changes in consultation with partners. Changes can be ranked according to significance and the contribution made by UNDP and partners to the change (low, medium or high). This involves assessing the influence of other actors and interventions, and changes in the PVE context. The PVE change capturing tool could be useful here.

Use findings:

6

Ensure that data on changes, intended and unintended, positive or negative are shared within teams and amongst partners to inform ongoing programming and to provide evidence for reporting.

Adapted from Outcome Harvesting, BetterEvaluation