by Andrea Meneses

Can we say that an evaluation is truly participatory if it does not involve a gender perspective? Can we carry out gender responsive evaluations without the active participation of the groups involved in the evaluation process? Are we politicising evaluation by incorporating an inclusive perspective?

Far from providing answers, I want to briefly look at the ideas put forward by various researchers and evaluators who invite us to reflect on the topic, the task of evaluation, and its transformative potential.

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by Sergio Martinic

Participatory Evaluation experiences value and validate the interpretations of participants concerning the projects, policies and interventions that are being analysed (Fetterman, 2005). These experiences create space for participants to share their knowledge and particular ways of looking at the real-life situations and problems that the interventions under evaluation are seeking to address (Gil & Heras, 2010; Menéndez, Torralbo & Luque, 2021; Paño, Rébola, & Suarez, 2019).

This constitutes one of the principal contributions of this evaluative approach: knowing and understanding the actions from the point of view of the other allows for a deeper and more realistic examination of the results and impacts of the programme or action under evaluation.

The integration of participant perspectives brings with it significant conceptual and methodological challenges. This article argues that the opinions of participants should be analysed on the understanding that they are part of broader social representations of the culture to which the subjects belong. From a methodological point of view, qualitative data and discourse analysis strategies are good tools for analysing interpretations and knowledge expressed during a participatory process. Continue reading →

by Osvaldo Néstor Feinstein

“Integrative Evaluation” (IE) is an approach that mitigates polarising discourse by integrating various seemingly contradictory perspectives and/or hypotheses. Participatory evaluation (PE) allows for the incorporation of the population’s perspectives on the processes and results of policies, programmes and/or projects, limiting or avoiding technocratic bias.

Evaluations are affected by perspective both in terms of the questions posed and the answers obtained. As populations are heterogeneous, it is very likely that they will contain a range of perspectives, which may also differ from those of experts. How should this type of situation be handled?

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by Marina Apgar

While celebrating a greater openness toward participatory evaluation (PE), many evaluators continue to adhere to traditional ways of understanding “rigour”. Within these frameworks, quality standards are based on the supposed existence of a methodological hierarchy, in which objective and quantitative methods are placed higher than others, considered to be less “rigorous”.

These traditional approaches to rigour are manifested in evaluation designs that select one central method —which may be quantitative or qualitative— and add other less important methods if required, creating a mixed methods approach. If we follow this approach, our role as evaluators is to faithfully and strictly apply a protocol based on the standards established by our central methodology. In this context, participatory methods are considered to be weak, lacking in rigour and prone to bias. The only way to overcome their perceived weakness is to add “objective” methods to increase the “rigour” of the participatory design and so minimise its bias.

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by Luisa Graffigna

While I have always found Participatory Evaluation attractive, until recently I viewed it as irrelevant to my work. That changed when I listened to Marina Apgar’s presentation, Evaluación Participativa y rigor en el marco de una evaluación transformadora [Participatory Evaluation and rigour in the context of a transformative evaluation, only available in Spanish] at the EvalParticipativa international seminar in December 2021. Her talk helped me realise how the criteria of rigour in evaluation that she spoke of are echoed in a field with which I am more familiar: social research.

All of us carry with us our own set of lived experiences. In my case, my academic training as a sociologist and a period several decades ago of collective work, reflection and practice linked to processes of Popular Education -together with some of the people who coordinate EvalParticipativa today- contributed to my interest in, and understanding of, what Marina was saying. From this experience, the “participatory” part resonates with me, but my background positions me more firmly within the field of social research and it is from this position that I will share some thoughts about the ways these two processes, each with their own logic, converge and diverge.

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by Dagny Skarwan

The need to carry out an evaluation in order to discover what results have been achieved by an intervention is appreciated by organisations, projects and the teams responsible for implementing them. In turn, monitoring is often linked to accountability, generally through a weekly or annual report.

Moreover, in the field of NGOs, monitoring is usually understood as reporting activities, in other words, accounting for everything that has been done, within a set period, in relation to the operational plan.

Even when projects have a logical framework or results matrix, and even when they have developed a theory of change, it is not unusual for organisations and local teams to be surprised by the instruments they come across when they start getting involved in participatory monitoring of outcomes and impacts. In this type of monitoring, I usually help teams reflect on how outcomes are measured, how impacts can be recognised and measured, and -from there- recognise the different contributions of the project. Questions also arise concerning the purposes of monitoring that go beyond the need of a project coordinator to provide accountability, and include questions such as where to start when monitoring a project and how to know when it is the right moment to do so.

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by Julia Espinosa Fajardo

In participatory evaluation, people and their diverse needs are put at the centre of evaluation processes, and consequently, public policies and programmes. The active inclusion of the different voices throughout the whole evaluative exercise opens up a space to highlight the violation of rights, processes of social exclusion and the structural inequalities that exist in each context.

In this sense, it is an opportunity to make visible the different situations of discrimination and vulnerability, and move towards public actions that address these realities to a greater extent and have more transformative power. In this way, participation in evaluation is a key aspect in the process of deepening democracy and ensuring rights, while at the same time, leaving no one behind.

What does EvalParticipativa reveal to us about the Latin American experience in this regard? How can we promote evaluation practices that have a positive impact on rights, inclusion and equity? What challenges are posed in the region?

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