What's the best way to involve program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation?

1 Benefits of involvement

Involving program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation can bring many advantages to your program and organization. These include gaining valuable insights and feedback from those who know your program best, increasing the relevance, validity, and credibility of your evaluation findings and recommendations, enhancing the ownership, engagement, and empowerment of program beneficiaries and staff, improving relationships and communication with them, building trust and transparency, as well as demonstrating your commitment to ethical and respectful evaluation practices. All of these can help to foster a culture of learning and improvement, while upholding the principles of social justice and human rights.

2 Ways of involvement

Involving program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation is essential, depending on the purpose, scope, and design of your evaluation. Consulting them during the planning and design phase can help identify their needs and expectations, as well as co-create evaluation goals, questions, methods, and indicators. Engaging them during the data collection and analysis phase can ensure accuracy, completeness, and diversity of your data. Involving them during the reporting and dissemination phase allows for shared findings and recommendations, as well as the production of the evaluation report. Finally, collaborating with them during the utilization and follow-up phase supports program improvement and learning.

3 Challenges of involvement

When involving program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation, there are several challenges and risks that must be addressed. Practical constraints such as time, budget, resources, and logistics can limit the extent and quality of your involvement activities. Additionally, ethical dilemmas regarding confidentiality, consent, safety, and power dynamics require careful consideration and mitigation. Methodological issues such as bias, validity, reliability, and generalizability can also affect the rigor and usefulness of your evaluation. Lastly, relational difficulties such as conflicts, disagreements, misunderstandings, and resistance may arise that affect the trust and cooperation among your program beneficiaries and staff.

4 Strategies for involvement

In order to successfully and ethically involve program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation, it is important to adopt strategies and best practices. These include defining the purpose, scope, and level of involvement activities, using methods and tools that are suitable for the needs of those involved, providing support and incentives to enable and motivate participation, and establishing a positive relationship based on mutual respect. Communication should be clear and transparent, while feedback, recognition, and compensation should be provided in an equitable manner. Doing so will help ensure that the evaluation is successful.

5 Examples of involvement

To illustrate how you can involve program beneficiaries and staff in an evaluation, here are some real-life examples of non-profit programs that have done so successfully. For instance, a food security program used community-based participatory evaluation methods such as focus groups, interviews, surveys, and photovoice to assess the program's impact on the beneficiaries' food security, nutrition, and well-being. A youth empowerment program designed and implemented a developmental evaluation using storytelling, reflection, and action research to monitor and support the program's innovation and adaptation in a complex and changing context. Additionally, a gender equality program produced and disseminated a utilization-focused evaluation utilizing participatory video, case studies, and policy briefs to communicate and advocate for the program's achievements and challenges in promoting gender equality and women's rights.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?