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....
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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...
Full StoryQualitative 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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