Defining Participation in Evaluation for CSO's

[Josephine Tsui]

Participation in evaluation is an approach to program evaluation which provides active involvement of stakeholders in the program including providers, partners, beneficiaries or any other interested party.

However, the standards of participation are varied which means whose voices are heard are inconsistent. CSO often need to advocate for the marginalised but must also negotiate the process of which actors are involved. Many stakeholders have different incentives and risks with the evaluation process. CSO’s negotiating their cooperation while advocating for the participation of marginalised communities can be political. To help with the evaluation community, Josephine Tsui and Rituu B. Naanda are interviewing selected CSO’s to explore these questions further.

Here are our research questions:

1) Please tell me about you organisation and how you and the organisation is involved in evaluations.
2) How do you define a useful evaluation?
3) Can you talk to us more about who participates in evaluations? How do they participate? Who does the information serve?
4) What value does the evaluation serve?
5) What barriers are there to ensure evaluations are more useful?

If you are interested in participating, please get in touch.

[Cecilia Deme]

Dear Josephine and Rituu,

Your research seems very interesting, and, definitely very relevant, when considering avoiding sampling bias. In case you would like to get some support or insight, I would be interested in participating.

Many thanks and best regards,

Cecilia

[Josephine Tsui]

Thanks @Cecilia Deme, I have sent you an email.

[Carol Miller]

How are you Josephine?

This looks so interesting and important. 

[Supun Sandanayaka]

Dear Josephine.
I'm interested in joining with your research.
Hereby I attach my email.
Can you please send me further details.
Thank you.

[Shankar Talwar]

Hi Josephene and Rituu, These questions are very important. Let us connect to discuss more.

[Soma Kishore Parthasarathy]

Please share more details. Look forward to participate. Warmly . [e-mail]

[Jean de Dieu BIZIMANA]

Dear Josephine thank you for this email this is a wonderful topic personally in am ready to join in this.

Regards

[Madhumita]

Excited and greatful to see this initiative. For many involving the voices of stakeholders and CSOs means having them in the same room to share the evaluation design and tools which are mostly been developed by us. This study will surely go beyond this and capture what does involvement means. 

I would also be interested 

• how are the CSOs and stakeholders involved, contributing and shaping the analysis, as much of what we share externally are done at this stage - it's a power game.
• what does participation or involvement means - are there spaces where CSOs and stakeholders leading the front?

Best wishes

Madhumita