Alice Macfarlan

How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

This recorded webinar featuring Scott Chaplow, Juha Uitto, Eddah Kanini, and Lennise Baptiste provides a useful discussion of evaluation's role in mainstreaming environmental concerns, as well as practical guidance and resources for evaluators on how to

This resource, from the Footprint Evaluation Initiative, discusses how the six evaluation criteria of the OECD DAC (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development – Development Assistance Committee) can be used to get environmental

In part one of this three-part webinar series, Andy Rowe and Patricia Rogers discuss what was learnt during the

In the last part of this three-part webinar series, Andy Rowe and Patricia Rogers introduce a typology being developed that will assist a wide range of evaluations in assessing the effect of interventions on natural systems and sustainabili

This Footprint Evaluation Initiative report describes four 'thought experiments' undertaken as part of this project.

In part two of this three-part webinar series, Jane Davidson and Patricia Rogers discuss several ways to get sustainability on the evaluation agenda, even for projects that have no explicit environmental objectives and where there is no men

Happy Holidays! As we head into 2022 we thought we'd share a list of resources for you to peruse in the new year.

We’re currently going through a global period of rapid change and adaption, due in large part to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our lives and work.

While we’re happy to wish the year 2020 farewell, many of the challenges and difficulties that arose over the past 12 months are still with us, as is the sadness over the many different forms of loss we’ve all experienced.

This guide presents a number of options for creating visual press releases, which is especially important when your press release is for distribution on social media.

This blog post by Lou Dubois writing for Inc. outlines some key elements of a traditional media release and gives guidance on how to adapt these to social media. It also touches on how to measure engagement.

This webinar to launch the book Randomized Control Trials in the Field of Development: A Critical Perspective brings together five representatives of the book's editors and authors for a discussion around some of the key ideas and

We’re continuing our series, sharing ideas and resources on ways of ensuring that evaluation adequately responds to the new challenges during the pandemic.

Given the numerous interconnected environmental crises the world faces, there is an urgent need to include consideration of environmental impacts into all evaluations. 

Evaluation needs to respond to the changes brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.  As well as direct implications for the logistics of collecting data and managing evaluation processes, the pandemic has led to rapid changes in what organis

We’re excited to be involved in the 2020 IPDET Hackathon – a week-long event in which hundreds of people from around the world bring together their skills,

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to rapid changes in the activities and goals of many organisations, whether these relate to addressing direct health impacts, the consequential economic and social impacts or to the need to change the way thing

Organisations around the world are quickly having to adapt their programme and project activities to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. We’re starting a new blog series to help support these efforts.

Meetings and gatherings are vital components of evaluation. Often these are done face-to-face, however sometimes necessity or practicality makes meeting online the best option.

Often referred to as 'visual note-taking', graphic recording is a method that merges data collection and reporting to create a visual record of a discussion.

Strengthening evaluation capacity of individuals, organisations and systems continues to be a major focus for BetterEvaluation so in this blog we present 7 ways that might be useful when planning how to do evaluation better in 2020.

This paper is the first in the BetterEvaluation Monitoring and Evaluation for Adaptive Management working paper series. 

This paper explores the nexus of data science and evaluation, probing the issues and challenges of incorporating big data into evaluation practice. This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan.

In this webinar on evaluative thinking, Thomas Schwandt explores two perspectives on the topic.

In this first blog of 2019, Patricia Rogers, Greet Peersman and Alice Macfarlan examine how New Year's resolutions are similar to many evaluation practices.

This free, one-hour online course by USAID gives an introduction to the Collaboration, Learning, Adapting (CLA) approach.

In this AEA365 'Rad Resource' blog post, Sara Vaca discusses the importance and challenges of introducing a Gender perspective into evaluations - even when this is not included in the evaluation ToRs.

Blue Marble Evaluation is a global initiative focused on training the next generation of evaluators to Think Globally, Act Globally and Evaluate Globally. 

The Gender Spectrum Collection is a stock photo library featuring images of trans and non-binary models.

This briefing paper from IIED argues that, if the world is going to make significant progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, development actors will need to think and work in new ways, including in evalu

This online tool is designed to assist with choosing accessible colour combinations for text on the web. This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan.

This resource, produced by the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association (SAMEA) brings together a range of content about monitoring and evaluation practice.

Evaluation reporting is important.

In this blog, I wanted to share three examples of communication plan templates that address this and allow for more detail and thinking through of the communication and dissemination process.

If you’re like me, you think you’ve got a pretty good handle on data visualisation – you know how to make basic customisations to graphs in Excel, you know you should probably think carefully about whether or not to put that large table int

We've now completed the first component of our user research - the user survey.  

This template aims to help evaluators think through and document some of the issues around reporting needs during an evaluation. This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan.

This blog series shares advice for young and emerging evaluators from a range of experienced evaluation practitioners. The tips range from methodological advice to personal tips on building resilience and relationships.

The report from UN Women, with support from UN Global Pulse, outlines the value of big data for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation to women.

In this webinar, three evaluators (Kylie Hutchinson, Benoit Gauthier, and E. Jane Davidson) share their real-life evaluation blunders and ways to incorporate their lessons learned into the classroom or personal practice.

Designing Quality Survey Questions addresses challenges such as language preferences for standard demographic questions (e.g.

This four-part series by Elizabeth Grim is a good introduction for those new to Twitter.

The material from BetterEvaluation comes from a combination of curating existing material and co-creating new material.  This blog is part of an ongoing series about material that we have co-created with BetterEvaluation users.

The material from BetterEvaluation comes from a combination of curating existing material and co-creating new material.  This blog is part of an ongoing series about material that we have co-created with BetterEvaluation users.

We've got our head in realism this week, partly because early-bird registrations for the 2017 International Realist Conference close soon, and partly because we've been shown Chris Lysy's realist cartoon series (commissioned by the Rameses

We often get email enquiries asking for advice in preparing the documents used to invite evaluators to prepare proposals to do an evaluation.

This site contains a great roundup of blog posts about using social media to encourage research uptake.

Adaptive management is usually understood to refer to an iterative process of reviewing and making changes to programmes and projects throughout implementation.

The wonderful thing about BetterEvaluation is that it is, at its core, a platform to co-create and share knowledge about how to better conduct, use and manage evaluations. 

A decision making matrix can be useful to summarise decision makers and types of decisions in a matrix which can be referred to when developing and implementing evaluation processes.

This suite of tools is useful for creating highly interactive, beautiful representations of data.

Qualitative Chart Chooser 3.0 is an updated version of Stephanie Evergreen and Jennifer Lyons attempt to organise different ways to show qualitative data.

This book by Kylie Hutchinson presents a number of innovative ways of reporting, including different methods for presentations, narrative summaries, presenting findings visually and making use of digital outputs.

In this document, Richard Krueger outlines some key ideas around using observation effectively in evaluation.

In this example, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG - part of the World Bank Group) have used a network analysis to gain a better understanding of the role of the World Bank Group's policy interventions in the health sector in Liberia in

This worksheet by the Action Evaluation Collective gives a steps by step run down of how to use storyboards to engage people in telling their stories. It's focus is on working with and engaging young people in a participatory process.

In this edition of the BE FAQ blog, we address a question that comes up quite often: How do you go about analysing data that has been collected from respondents via a questionnaire?

This report by DFID-ESRC Growth Research Programme (DEGRP) describes in detail how the researchers turned findings into recommendations, and how the various stages of stakeholder consultation influenced different elements of the project. 

Dylomo is a free, web-based tool that can be used to create interactive, online logic models. Its development involved a user-testing experience at the Canadian Evaluation Society conference in St.

This checklist by Kelly N. Robertson and Lori Wingate provides suggestions for the content and organization of long-form evaluation reports that are concise, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-navigate.

Big data is emerging as a new world currency.

This tool, developed by USAID/Rwanda and shared as part of USAID's Collaboration, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Toolkit, is one way of graphically depicting relationships between key stakeholders.

This is a step-by-step guide for creating a dashboard with Google Sheets (a free, online spreadsheet application).

USAID's annual Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA) Case Competition captures case studies of USAID staff and implementing partners using a CLA approach for organizational learning and better development outcomes.

In May we blogged about ways of framing the difference between research and evaluation. We had terrific feedback on this issue from the international BetterEvaluation community and this update shares the results.

This blog by Stephanie Evergreen curates a number of examples of engaging executive summaries and evaluation reports. The focus is on highlighting effective visual design of these reporting formats.

This list compiled by Alex Ivanovs brings together a range of books aimed at both beginners and those who are looking to fill in gaps in their knowledge.

Stephanie Evergreen (Evergreen Data) and Ann K.

This blog post in AEA365: A Tip-a-Day by and for Evaluators by Artineh Samkian and Joelle Greene discusses the use of Graphic Timelines as a way of presenting data to stakeholders that was both accessib

This report on a community-based survey about Jamaican youth risk and resiliency behaviour conducted in 2006 on behalf of USAID contains an example of a data use calendar as Appendix 9 (page 158).

This online guide by Ann K. Emery walks user through the full process of creating a data visualisation, from understanding your audience, through to sharing your dataviz.

Written by Darren Cambridge and Vicki Suter for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), this guide provides practical steps and advice for the creation of Communities of Practice (CoPs).

This chapter section by Eben A. Weitzman guides readers through some of the important considerations when choosing appropriate qualitative analysis software.

This document, created by the UK Data Archive, gives researchers an overview of the best practices involved in data management for long-term, accessible data storage, protection and archive.

This NVivo 10 help file walks readers through the process of creating and using framework matrices in NVivo for the analysis of qualitative data.

A free and easy to use platform available online and as an iPad app for quickly making simple, well laid-out presentations.

A powerpoint put together by Steve Montague.

This blog post by Ann K. Emery and Johanna Morariu outlines their strategies for setting up and running a webinar.  This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan.

ICPSR is an international consortium made up of over 700 academic institutions and research organizations.

This guide addresses the issue of ensuring that evaluation findings are used by stakeholders.

Produced for the Early Childhood Nutrition and Anaemia Prevention Project, Fred Hollows Foundation, this Summary Report presents a large amount of non-numeric data effectively through use of a timeline of the project. 

Adobe CC (formerly Adobe Kuler) is useful for generating colour schemes from screen shots of, say, a logo or photograph.

This short guide by the Technical and Operational Performance Support (TOPS) Program and USAID focuses on identifying appropriate formats and approaches for presentations, group discussions and problem solving sessions to enhance peer-to-pe

This article by Anthony Morgan and Peter Homel of the Australian Institute of Criminology discusses the importance of evaluation in crime prevention.

This report presents the results of a performance audit conducted by the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.

Michael Woolcock's paper addresses the fact that rising standards required for assessing the impact of development project have not been met with equally rigorous procedures for guiding decisions about external validity - "whether and how s

Part of the Australian Bureau of Statistic's Statistic Language website, this guide to Correlation and Causation is easy to follow and explains the major features of correlation and its difference from causation.

The GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Science's Data Archive focuses primarily on the processing and archiving of German and international comparitive surveys in the fields of social and political science.

In this blog post for the NVivo blog, Meg Callanan discusses her experiences in using the NVivo framework matrices function with both small and large data sets.

Phil Rabinowitz's chapter in CHINA.org gives a detailed overview of GIS mapping.

This free, online course run by the Open Learning Initiative takes students through the basics of statistics and probability.

This presentation at the AEA Evaluation 2013 Conference by Artineh Samkian, the University of Southern California, and Joel Greene, Harder+Company, gives an overview of the steps involved in creating a graphic timeline that is accessible to

This resource is a friendly, practical and fun guide to giving presentations, aimed at those who are not confident about presenting. This resource and the following information was contributed by Alice Macfarlan

This article, "Evaluation, valuation, negotiation: some reflections towards a culture of evaluation" explores the issues of developing standards for an evaluation, when these have not previously been agreed, in a rural development program i

This blog post by Stephanie Evergreen from Evergreen Data uses the designs of a number of business cards that she had collected over the years to highlight a number of important principles of des

This book by Sarah Earl, Fred Carden and Terry Smutylo takes an original approach to assessing development impacts by focusing on the way in which people relate to each other and to their environment rather than simply evaluating the produc

This resource is an invited presentation to the European Parliament committee on regional development.

This manual, written by Karina Kielmann, Fabian Cataldo and Janet Seeley, aims to give readers of a non-scientific background an introduction to key theoretical concepts and methodologies in qualitative research.

This guide by the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, while focused on communicating research on climate change, will be useful for anyone interested in the theory behind communication and behaviour change and those who need to

This chapter Jon A. Krosnick and Stanley Presser presents a number of recommendations about survey design based on conventional wisdom and a review of the methodological literature.

In this journal article, Jane Davidson advocates for better evaluation practice by picking apart four common practices in academic and social research that evaluators might inappropriately apply when working in the field of evaluation.

Although focused on viewing critical reflection through the scope of management learning, this article brings discusses a range of critical reflection tools that have been drawn from other professional areas, such as storytelling, met

This report by Burt Perrin, based on the Roundtable "Moving from Outputs to Outcomes: Implications for Public Sector Management" December 15-16th, 2004 sponsored by the World Bank and the IBM Center

This paper in the Nurse Researcher journal by Tracey Williamson and Andrew Long walks readers through the benefits of using a number of different types of data displays when presenting qualitat

Burt Perrin's 2002 report to the OECD outlines common challenges in performance measurement and results-based management, and identifies potential solutions to these.

In this 1998 paper, Steve Montague addresses the limitation of logic models in that they have a tendency to direct their attention to causal chains without making reference to who and where the action was.

This 1998 paper by J.

This document, produced by the United Nations World Food Programme's Office of Evaluation, lays out some general guidelines on the management of an evaluation and how to disseminate the evaluation's findings effectively to key stakeholders.

This interactive graphic created by Kristoffer Magnusson graphically illustrates the principles of correlation.

An impact evaluation approach based on identifying and investigating the most successful cases and seeing if their results can justify the cost of the intervention (such as a training course).

Jason Davies' website contains a large number of data viz examples, particular around geo data. It also contains some links to to tools, including a word cloud and tree map.

Multiple lines and levels of evidence (MLLE) is a systematic approach to causal inference that involves bringing together different types of evidence (lines of evidence) and considering the strength of the evidence in terms of different ind

Footprint evaluation aims to embed consideration of environmental sustainability in all evaluations (and all monitoring systems), not only those with explicit environmental objectives.

An impact evaluation approach based on identifying and investigating the most successful cases and seeing if their results can justify the cost of the intervention (such as a training course).

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat's Centre of Excellence in Evaluation (CEE) provides advice and guidance on evaluation practices across the federal government.