Perspectives on impact evaluation conference

Event Details:

Keystone will be taking part at the 2009 Conference organised by NONIE, 3ie and AfrEA on impact evaluation. The conference titled Perspectives on Impact Evaluation: Approaches to Assessing Development Effectiveness will bring together development practitioners, policy makers, academics, evaluators and funders from all over the world " to share practical experiences, discuss innovations, craft new ways to collaborate and devise plans to improve policy and practice."

The conference represents a great opportunity for Keystone to promote Constituency Voice as an important and indispensable element for impact evaluations. We and our partners will be making the case for a change in the focus of impact evaluations: not just proving, but learning how to improve development interventions; not impact evaluation of development interventions, but impact evaluation as a development intervention.

Keystone will be facilitating the following pre-conference workshops and conference sessions:

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• Sunday 29 March morning. “Facilitating a theory of change as a comprehensive learning framework for participatory impact planning, assessment and learning (IPAL) in complex change processes”. Andre Proctor, Munyarazi Saruchera, Natalia Kiryttopoulou

This hands-on workshop will equip participants with the conceptual knowledge and skills to help organisations clarify and elaborate their theory of change so that it works as a comprehensive framework for planning, learning and reporting on their impacts (deliberate and unintended) and their contribution to long term sustainable success in complex systems.

• Sunday 29 March afternoon. “Learning with constituents: building reflection and dialogue into the rhythms of the organisation, constituency feedback and theory of public reporting”. Andre Proctor, Munyarazi Saruchera, Natalia Kiryttopoulou

The workshop will explore different ways of gathering, learning from and responding to feedback from the people meant to benefit from developmental interventions.

• Date and time TBD. Round-table discussion: “Constituency Voice - a key element in impact evalution”. Lawrence Haddad (IDS), Alnoor Ebrahim (HBS), Anabel Cruz (ICD), Sanjeev Khagram (iScale), Alex Jacobs (Keystone), Andre Proctor (Keystone)

The presentation will unpack 'Constituency Voice' methodology with a focus on its implications for impact evaluation. Examples from recent investments from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, WK Kellogg Foundation, and others social investors will illustrate how the context for impact evaluation is shifting to one in which improvement and learning are prioritized.
 

• Date and time TBC. “Comparative Constituency Feedback – a practical way of facilitating whole system learning and mutually accountable relationships for outcomes”.  Andre Proctor

This session will present comparative constituency feedback (CCF) surveys and reports as a tool for providing organizations with transformative information about how their policies and practices are perceived and experienced by their primary constituents, and how this perception compares with that of other similar organizations in their field. Although not an impact evaluation tool, CCF surveys contribute in identifying predictors of impact.

Other sessions presented by the Impacts Community of Practice of iScale and the Agriculture Learning and Impact Network (ALINe):

• Monday 30 March all day. “Strengthening Impact, Planning, Assessment and Learning: A Rigorous Mixed Method Approach for Development Effectiveness.” Sanjeev Khagram (iScale), Zenda Ofir (Evalnet), Patricia Rogers(CIRCLE, RMIT)

The workshop will focus on how to rigorously undertake impact evaluations by selecting, utilizing and learning from a fuller set of rigorous methods and mixed-methods approaches broadly with specific emphasis on rigorous comparative case study methodologies. Also, the workshop will focus on how to use impact evaluation to improve longer-term development effectiveness.

• Monday March 30 all day. “Challenges in Agricultural Development for Impact Evaluation”. Lawrence Haddad, Peter Taylor, Andy Sumner, (IDS), Alex Jacobs (Keystone)

This workshop will explore the critical challenges for improving impact planning, assessment and learning (IPAL), and provide IPAL practitioners an opportunity to engage with the new institutional arrangements, methods, and tools being developed by the proposed Gates-funded Agriculture Learning and Impacts Network to response to these challenges. Themes to be explored in the workshop include: how practically do organisations find the right balance between measuring performance and measuring longer term results; designing and delivering constituency feedback tools and services; fostering a system-level approach to planning and learning; and testing approaches to some of the enduring challenges in IPAL for agriculture development.

• Date and time TBD. Conference plenary: “What ‘Evidence’ and 'Methods" Can Contribute to Development Effectiveness?” Jennifer C Greene (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) Sanjeev Khagram (iScale), Melvin Mark (The Pennsylvania State University)

This panel will explore the enduring questions of credible evidence for what, whom and why which continue to pose fundamental challenges to increasing the rigor and utility of impact evaluation for development effectiveness. It will offer critical perspectives on the evaluative data or the ‘evidence’ needed to respond to this challenge in ways that are themselves of sustainable consequence.

• Date and time TBD. “Evaluating Advocacy and Influence Impacts to Increase Development Effectiveness”. Sanjeev Khagram (iScale), Julia Coffman (Harvard Family Evaluation Project), Subarna Mathes (iScale), Ricardo Wilson-Grau (Independent Evaluation Consultant)

This session will provide an introduction to innovative approaches and next generation good practices to examine, measure, assess and learn from the impacts of advocacy efforts, especially when addressing development effectiveness. The work is based on a Gates Foundation funded project that examined innovative methods and cases of advocacy impact, learning and evaluation.
 

• Date and time TBD. Round-table discussion: “Strengthening Impact, Planning, Assessment and Learning: A Rigorous Comparative Case Study Approach for Development Effectiveness” Sanjeev Khagram (iScale), Zenda Ofir (Evalnet), Patricia Rogers(CIRCLE, RMIT)

This round-table discussion will focus on how to rigorously undertake impact evaluations by selecting, utilizing and learning from a fuller set of rigorous methods and mixed-methods approaches broadly with specific emphasis on rigorous comparative case study methodologies.
 

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