Scope evaluation

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It is important to take the time to consider carefully what the evaluation needs to do before thinking through possible evaluation designs.

Ensure all those who need to be consulted during this process are adequately involved.

Products

The following items are potential outputs from this step. Where possible, it might be useful to research other deliverables that have also been shown to be effective.

Description of the programming that is going to be evaluated (the evaluand)
Theory of change and/or logic model
List of primary intended users and their uses for the evaluation
List of agreed key evaluation questions
Evaluation timeline
Evaluator qualities
Evaluation budget

These products inform the development of a formal Terms of Reference (ToR) or Request for Proposal (RFP) (see Step 3).

IDRC-specific information

IDRC staff and partners may wish to peruse previous evaluations, particularly in similar topic areas, to understand how scope can be delineated and defined in various circumstances. IDRC maintains, in its online open-access digital library, a repository of evaluations conducted throughout IDRC’s history.

IDRC staff can also access a repository of Evaluation Terms of Reference compiled by the Policy and Evaluation Division.

Clarify what will be evaluated

An evaluation can focus on a project, a number of projects, a program, a policy, a strategy, an organization, a network.
Describe the theory of change

This section explains how and why you might use a theory of change when commissioning and managing an evaluation. It explains options for how it will be developed or revised, how it will be represented, and how it will be used.
Identify who are the primary intended users of the evaluation and what will they use it for

In most cases, the evaluation will have multiple uses.
Develop agreed key evaluation questions

Evaluation, by definition, must answer truly evaluative questions: it must ask not only ‘What were the results?’ (a descriptive question) but also ‘How good were the results?’ (an evaluative question). Depending on the type of evaluation, causal questions also need to be addressed (to what extent were the results due to the intervention?).
Decide the timing of the evaluation

Monitoring (the routine tracking and reporting of priority information about an intervention) and evaluation (a discrete study to produce an evaluative judgement about merit, worth or significance of an intervention) are distinct but highly inter-related activities.
Decide whether the evaluation will be done by an external team, an internal team or a hybrid of both

Expertise, impartiality, cost, and time are key issues in deciding who will conduct the evaluation.
Determine the evaluator qualities

Different types of evaluation (e.g., impact assessment, action-oriented evaluation) will have different demands in terms of technical and other expertise and the degree of ‘distance’ between the evaluator and the subject.
Identify what resources are available for the evaluation and what will be needed

It is important to develop an estimate of the resources that are available for evaluation and what will be required to do the evaluation well.