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Introduction to the Guidelines

Why Guidelines, what for, and for whom ?

Persons who have to conduct evaluation of development research meet extremely diverse situations :

  • their objectives can be extremely diverse,
  • they can be active within one or more of a broad array of disciplines.

Furthermore the situation/context in which they operate will strongly influence their choices and procedures.

Yet in every case they use – or will use – evaluation instruments (such as procedures, grids, questionnaires, scales, etc.) which generally are imposed upon them by the evaluation‘s sponsor. In less frequent instances the evaluator may have to build his own instrument.

All, or almost all, such methods abide by a series of common principles and general rules, which quite often are not made explicit. Such principles should be respected when a specific guide for evaluation is being prepared.

The purpose of the present Guidelines is therefore to provide the people in charge of constructing instruments for evaluating development research with a set of commonly agreed principles and rules of good practice, to help them in :

  • building their own evaluation instruments;
  • adapting existing tools to new needs and/or specific situations
  • in validating, assessing or utilising a particular evaluation procedure.

What is called “specific guides” here are not at all complex and heavy documents. They can range from (1) just a grid or a questionnaire plus instructions for use; to (2) a short text with introduction, tools and procedures, and a few annexes; through (3) less frequently a full-fledged guide.

The prime target reader of these Guidelines therefore is the author or future author of a specific evaluation guide.

The evaluators themselves can be a secondary target group in quite a few cases, as will be illustrated further down.

What is development research ?

In the present text development research is interpreted as “research in a development context”. It is research that is, or could somehow, be relevant for development : either “research in/with a developing country”, or “research for development”, or “research on development”. There can be many definitions of development. For a more detailed discussion see in "relevance for development".

Preference should be given in the specific guide to the definition adopted locally, by the person or organisation who sponsors the specific guide.

Presentation of the Guidelines

These Guidelines are neither a handbook on evaluation, nor a manual on how to evaluate, but a guide for the development, adaptation, or assessment of evaluation methods. They are a reference and a guide of good practice about building a specific guide in a given situation.

As the visitor will promptly find out, much freedom is left to him to proceed according to the context in which he works, his specific objectives, his own concept of development and of scientific quality, his values and those of his group.

The Guidelines format is determined by one major consideration : to be practical and attractive. The amount of information provided to meet the highly diversified needs of the target group is voluminous. But the reader should not be deterred, because he will easily find what is of immediate interest to him/her. A breakdown was adopted :

The text itself is composed of short pages, easily accessible, and referring abundantly to a set of annexes. 

Another advantage of putting most of the substantive information in the annexes is that, in this way, we can afford to treat them with a sufficient degree of detail and space, without the drawback of overloading the text. It will be up to the user to decide which annexes he is going to read, let alone use. In most cases that would mean only a small protion of the annexes.

Using the Guidelines

The present Guidelines are explicitly intended to be used flexibly. It is up to each author of an evaluation guide to pick what he deems useful in his particular situation and for his particular needs. He should however respect the specificity of each discipline, and take into account the needs and wishes of researchers from both the North and the South.

As already mentioned, the Guidelines can also be used for revising existing instruments and procedures.

A call to the visitor for assistance

The present document is a first attempt, to be adapted in the light of experience. The visitors are invited to communicate their experiences and make recommendations for eventual improvements. The Academy hopes that groups and agencies with a long practice of evaluating research will not only use the Guidelines to update or amend their own tools and procedures, but would also send us comments, either in the near future (on the basis of their past experience), or after having applied the Guidelines.