The difference between Monitoring and Evaluation

Monitoring tends to look at inputs and activities and relates to the ongoing project process and performance. It is a regular, systematic collection and analysis of information to track the progress of project implementation. Evaluation tends to look at longer term impacts or outcomes of project activities. It is a process that tends to make a judgment, or offer an informed opinion to assess the value, worth or impact of a project. Additionally, evaluation may try to identify the reasons for both success and failure, and what can be learnt from both.

Read about Different types of evaluation

What information do you need?

Before starting to monitor or evaluate your project, it is important to be clear about what you want to assess, and who the information is for. If you purpose is in order to learn and adapt, you may want to think about how to provide or stimulate an open learning environment among your team or your stakeholders.

Some of the questions you will need to consider are the following:

• What is the key information for your purpose or audience?
• Is this available or practical to gather?
• Or will you need to use related information as an approximate measure in the absence of direct data?
• Will you want to collect this information over time in order for it to be useful?

You may want to work just with your project staff and volunteers at first in order to develop a monitoring and reporting strategy or framework. But don’t neglect the possible value of involving other stakeholders, beneficiaries and funders in the process, depending on the relationships between those who have an interest in the project.

Ideally you will have identified or devised some Indicators in your project planning stage. These are best developed at the planning stage and the Logical Framework Analysis can be a good framework in which to identify these.

Indicators should stem from clearly stated project Objectives. The best Indicators (and Objectives!) are ‘SMART’:-

                                                                               

S	SPECIFIC	Reflect what the project intends to change.
M	MEASURABLE	Must be precisely defined; measurement and interpretation is unambiguous. Provide objective data, independent of who is collecting it.
A	APPROPRIATE	Attainable by the project and sensitive to change.
R	RELEVANT	Feasible time and money to collect data using chosen indicators. Relevant to the project in question.
T	TIME-BOUND	The information is up to date, is available when you want it, and reflects the relevant project period.

You should also consider whether the information you are gathering or presenting is objectively verifiable. i.e. whether someone else could verify what you have reported. While subjective assessments have their place, it is usually not enough to simply report that it’s someone’s impression that things are going well. You need to explain why this is thought to be the case, or what evidence has been considered in order to come to this conclusion.

More detail on the topic of Indicators is available here [link to MDF doc].
 
Outlined above are the basics of developing monitoring and evaluation framework to assess intended outcomes and results. However, it is also important to be aware of unintended or unexpected outcomes or changes which occur as a result of your project. These may be either positive or negative. There are methods and approaches that attempt to capture these.

You may want to explore our pages and resources on different Monitoring and Evaluation Methods and Approaches[link – not yet developed]

In recent years there has also been a strong move towards Results-based Management and Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation. Find more here[link to RB page].

Summary:

• Start early and build monitoring and evaluation into your project from the beginning
• Keep it simple.
• Record information in sufficient detail to illustrate accountability and provide for future evaluations.
• Negotiate between stakeholders, if involved, to decide what to monitor and evaluate
• Monitoring and evaluation are not an add-on.
• Indicators should be objective, verifiable and clearly understood by all stakeholders
• For each goal and outcome on a log frame (if used) a specific data collection method should be identified.
• Make sure a clear line exists from goal to indicator to final outcome in your log frame
• The process is only complete once the lessons have been put to use.

And finally…

Remember the Power of Measuring Results [1]

• If you do not measure results, you cannot tell success from failure.
• If you cannot see success, you cannot reward it.
• If you cannot reward success, you are probably rewarding failure.
• If you cannot see success, you cannot learn from it.
• If you cannot recognize failure, you cannot correct it.
• If you can demonstrate results, you can win public support.

[1] Adapted from David Osborn and Ted Graebler. Reinventing government. (Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1992).