Dealing With Complexity in Development Evaluation: A Practical Approach

Recognizing that complexity calls for innovative, conceptual, and methodological solutions, this unique book offers practical guidance to policymakers, managers, and evaluation practitioners on how to design and implement complexity-responsive evaluations that can be undertaken in the real world of time, budget, data, and political constraints. Introductory chapters present comprehensive, non-technical overviews of the most common evaluation tools and methodologies, and additional content addresses more cutting-edge material. The book also includes six case study chapters to illustrate examples of various evaluation contexts from around the world.

Michael Bamberger has been involved in development evaluation for fifty years. Beginning in Latin America where he worked in urban community development and evaluation for over a decade, he became interested in the coping strategies of low-income communities, how they were affected by and how they influenced development efforts. Most evaluation research fails to capture these survival strategies, frequently underestimating the resilience of these communities – particularly women and female-headed households. During 20 years with the World Bank he worked as monitoring and evaluation advisor for the Urban Development Department, evaluation training coordinator with the Economic Development Department and Senior Sociologist in the Gender and Development Department. After retiring from the Bank in 2001 he has worked as a development evaluation consultant with more than 10 UN agencies as well as development banks, bilateral development agencies, NGOs and foundations. Since 2001 he has been on the faculty of the International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET). Recent publications include: (with Jim Rugh and Linda Mabry) RealWorld Evaluation: Working under budget, time, data and political constraints (2012 second edition); (with Marco Segone) How to design and manage equity focused evaluations (2011); Engendering Monitoring and Evaluation ( 2013 ); (with Linda Raftree) Emerging opportunities: Monitoring and evaluation in a tech-enabled world (2014); (with Marco Segone and Shravanti Reddy) How to integrate gender equality and social equity in national evaluation policies and systems (2014).

Jos Vaessen (Ph.D. Maastricht University) is Principal Evaluation Specialist at the Internal Oversight Service of UNESCO in Paris and lecturer at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. After completing his M.Sc. in 1997 (Wageningen University) and prior to starting his current position at UNESCO in 2011, he has been involved in research, teaching and evaluation activities in the field of international development at Antwerp University and, more recently, Maastricht University. Over the last fifteen years or so, he has worked for several multilateral and bilateral international organizations mostly on evaluation-related assignments. His fields of interest include: theory and practice evaluation, impact evaluation, rural development and environment. In addition to managing and conducting evaluations Jos regularly serves on reference groups of evaluations of different organizations.

He has been (co-) author of more than 30 publications, including three books. Recent publications include: Impact evaluations and development – NONIE guidance on impact evaluation (2009, co-author, with F. Leeuw), Mind the gap: perspectives on policy evaluation and the social sciences (2009, co-editor,with F. Leeuw), The effects of microcredit on women’s control over household spending in developing countries (2014, coordinator and first author, with A. Rivas, M. Duvendack, R. Palmer Jones, F. Leeuw, G. van Gils, R. Lukach, N. Holvoet and J. Bastiaensen, J.G. Hombrados, and H. Waddington).

Estelle Raimondo is a Research Associate and a Ph.D. candidate at the George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration where she specializes in development evaluation. Prior to joining GWU, Estelle served as an Associate Evaluation Specialist for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). In this capacity, she conducted a number of evaluations and policy reviews especially in Africa and worked closely with the United Nations Evaluation Group on integrating gender into evaluation practice. Over the last five years or so, Estelle has worked on a number of evaluation and research assignments for a range of organizations (e.g., the World Bank, the Independent Evaluation Group, UNEG, the Polish Government, the NSF, The GW Regulatory Center). Her current research focuses on how monitoring and evaluation can contribute to organizational and strategic change in international development agencies. She is exploring issues of evaluation culture, knowledge brokering and result-based management’s adequacy for organizational learning. Estelle is also researching how to adequately combine a range of methodologies stemming from different fields (e.g., quasi-experimental design, Case-based methods and systems-thinking) to address complex issues, such as gender equality. Estelle graduated summa cum laude from the Paris School of International Affairs with an M.A. in International Economic Policy. She also holds a Master of International Affairs in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) where she studied as a Fulbright scholar.