Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Card Sorting: A Participatory Tool for Qualitative Data Collection

Card sorting, one of the many participatory tools that evaluators use to gather data, helps us to see how a population sorts through and categorizes cards or oftentimes actual physical items....

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Participatory Tools for Qualitative Data Collection

Qualitative data plays an important role in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of projects. However, as project planners, managers, and evaluators, we will likely not be in a position to...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Using Focus Groups

Evaluators use focus groups in every step of a monitoring & evaluation project’s lifecycle, from planning through to impact evaluation. Usually, a project planner, manager, or evaluator will...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Interviews

Interviews tend to dominate qualitative data collection for monitoring and evaluation. Project planners and evaluators conduct a variety of different kinds of qualitative interviews for many...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Observation, Participant Observation, and M&E

Observation and participant observation are both very important data collection tools that evaluators use throughout the project cycle. Evaluators use observation and participant observation to...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: The Emic and the Etic: Their Importance to Qualitative Evaluators

There are two terms that I think all qualitative evaluators should know and take to heart: the etic and the emic.  These are terms usually used by anthropologists.  The etic perspective is the...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Conducting a Census

Official census data can be particularly useful to project planners and evaluators. Census data helps project planners and evaluators to set baselines that can be used to measure the outcomes or...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Causal Mechanisms: Let’s Consider Golf Balls

Part of designing a project intervention is articulating a theory of change. We first identify a societal problem, then we flesh out its causes, and we craft an intervention that addresses the...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: Thoughts Considering the Project Cycle

As we monitor and evaluate projects, we use many different kinds of qualitative methods, and each of these methods gives us different kinds of data.  Depending on our evaluation statement of work...

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Qualitative Methods in Monitoring and Evaluation: The Philosophy of Science and Qualitative Methods

Traditionally, funders and implementing agencies have used quantitative approaches to project monitoring and evaluation. They also use quantitative techniques to analyze data, and show output and...

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