Impact Assessment for Development Agencies : Learning to Value Change Book

This book considers the process of impact assessment and shows how and why it needs to be integrated into all stages of development programmes from planning to evaluation. Its basic premise is that impact assessment should refer not to the immediate outputs or effects of a project or programme, but to any lasting or significant changes that it brought about. From a theoretical overview, this book moves on to discuss the design of impact-assessment processes and a range of tools and methods, before illustrating their use in development, in emergencies, and in advocacy work. It ends by exploring ways in which a range of organisations have attempted to institutionalise impact-assessment processes and the challenges they have faced in doing so. In-depth case studies by Oxfam and Novib staff and their partner organisations show a variety of approaches to impact assessment – qualitative, quantitative, and participatory – in a range of situations from large-scale integrated development programmes to projects involving only one community. These include impact studies undertaken by BRAC and Proshika in Bangladesh, the evaluation of a post-conflict rehabilitation programme in El Salvador, a long-term study of the effectiveness of environmental projects in Zimbabwe, and a retrospective review of a neighbourhood project in the UK.