The magenta book: Guidance for evaluation

This guide, from H M Treasury, originally published in 2011 and updated in 2020, is the central guidance for all UK government departments on evaluation.

It focuses on: How evaluations should be designed and managed; outlining some of the different evaluation options available; how evaluation improves policy making; how evaluation results and evidence should be interpreted and presented; and how thinking about evaluation before and during the policy design phase can help to improve the quality of evaluation results.

Contents

• Chapter 1: Why, how and when to evaluate?
• Chapter 2: Evaluation scoping
• Chapter 3: Evaluation methods
• Chapter 4: Data collection, data access and data linking
• Chapter 5: Managing an evaluation
• Chapter 6: The use and dissemination of evaluation findings
• Chapter 7: Evaluation capabilities