Evidence-based decision-making

From Evaluations

Along with monitoring (internal and external) and their associated reporting, evaluations are one of the key components of the overall INTPA organisational learning effort, as represented by the monitoring and evaluation pyramid. Here, evidence produced by continuous internal monitoring supports and directs regular external monitoring exercises — which in turn provide findings further analysed by means of ad hoc evaluations at the intervention or strategic level.

During 2020 INTPA developed a new methodology for evaluations, aimed at increasing the regularity and quality of intervention-level evaluations and to strengthen the feedback loop of evaluation results into evidence-based policymaking, intervention design and implementation.

Evaluations at the closure stage must consider operational needs while prioritising the best possibilities for lesson learning so as to effectively feed into the design of new interventions and policies. Two types of evaluations are used to respond to this purpose.

• Final evaluations take place a few months before the operational closure of an intervention and should contribute to accountability by providing an assessment of the results achieved. They should also contribute to learning by providing an understanding of those factors that facilitated or hindered achievement of results, making their focus on why as well as what; and by identifying any lessons that would improve the quality of future interventions.
• Ex post evaluations take place one to two years after the operational closure of a given intervention. They focus on the impacts (expected and unexpected) and sustainability of the intervention to draw conclusions that may inform new interventions. They describe the achievements towards which the intervention contributed, as well as how it did so or why it did not contribute as expected.

Evaluations assess interventions along the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) evaluation criteria, i.e. relevance (often including the quality of design), efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability (For definition, see Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management - Second edition, 2022)

These are complemented by two INTPA-specific criteria: complementarity of assistance and EU added value. While some of the evaluation criteria examine the entire results chain and intervention logic, others focus on individual result levels (i.e. impact assessment and effectiveness, which revolves around the outcomes).

Evaluation criteria along the results chain