Adapting evaluation in the time of COVID-19 – DESCRIBE (part 1)

We’re continuing our series, sharing ideas and resources on ways of ensuring that evaluation adequately responds to the new challenges during the pandemic.
We’re continuing our series, sharing ideas and resources on ways of ensuring that evaluation adequately responds to the new challenges during the pandemic.
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 organisations are trying to do and how evaluation can best be used to support these changes.
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 things are done. Evaluation needs to support organisations to use evidence to plan these changes, to implement them effectively, and to understand whether or how they work – in short to articulate an appropriate theory of change and use it well.
A guide containing examples of supportive evaluation activities for organisations and leaders managing COVID-19 response efforts.
"How can qualitative researchers collect data during social-distancing measures? Adam Jowett outlines several techniques researchers can use to collect data without face-to-face contact with participants. Bringing together a number of previous studies, he also suggests such techniques have their own methodological advantages and disadvantages and that while these techniques may appear particularly apt during the coronavirus crisis, researchers should take time to reflect on ethical issues before re-designing their studies."