LONDON — While monitoring and evaluation is now seen as essential to good development — especially as the sector falls under increasing scrutiny and pressure to demonstrate impact and value for money — the nature of aid work often makes it difficult to carry out high-quality measurement.
Issues such as how to measure abstract concepts like accountability; working in fragile states where politics can get in the way; and navigating big multipartner projects which include multiple actors measuring different things in different ways, can make evaluation a tricky and time-consuming endeavor.
With this in mind, the Overseas Development Institute, a London-based think tank, recently convened a panel of evaluation experts to share their thoughts on the question of “how to measure the hard to measure.”