Introduction to the Guidelines
Why Guidelines, what for, and for whom?
Persons who have to conduct evaluation of development research [5] meet extremely diverse situations in terms of objectives [6] and disciplines [7].
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. Accordingly, the evaluator may have to build his/her own specific guide [8].
The purpose of the present Guidelines is therefore to provide the people in charge of constructing a specific guide for evaluating development research with a set of commonly agreed principles and rules of good practice, to help them in :
- building their own evaluation criteria;
- adapting existing tools to new needs and/or specific situations
- in validating, assessing or utilising an evaluation procedure specific to their objectives.
What is called “specific guide” 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) 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.
What is development research?
In the present Guidelines, development research is interpreted as “research in a development context”. There can be many definitions of development. For a more detailed discussion see in "relevance for development [9]".
Presentation of the Guidelines
These Guidelines are intended to be a reference and a guide of good practice about building a specific evaluation guide in a given situation.
As the visitor will promptly find out, much freedom is left to him/her to proceed according to the context in which he/she works, his/her specific objectives, his/her own concept of development [10] and of scientific quality [11].
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/she 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 [20].
It will be up to the user to decide which annexes he /she is going to read, let alone use. In most cases that would mean only a protion of the annexes.
Using the Guidelines
The present Guidelines are explicitly intended to be used flexibly. It is up to each author of a specific evaluation guide to pick what he / she deems useful in his/her particular situation. He / She should however respect the specificity of each discipline [7], and take into account the needs and wishes of researchers from both the North and the South.
These Guidelines can also be used for revising existing instruments and procedures.