COVID-19

Eleanor Williams is the Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Research Evidence at the Victorian Department of Health.

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.