The Road to Results: Designing and Conducting Effective Development Evaluations

'The Road to Results: Designing and Conducting Effective Development Evaluations' presents concepts and procedures for evaluation in a development context. It provides procedures and examples on how to set up a monitoring and evaluation system, how to conduct participatory evaluations and do social mapping, and how to construct a “rigorous” quasi-experimental design to answer an impact question. The text begins with the context of development evaluation and how it arrived where it is today. It then discusses current issues driving development evaluation, such as the Millennium Development Goals and the move from simple project evaluations to the broader understandings of complex evaluations. The topics of implementing 'Results-based Measurement and Evaluation' and constructing a 'Theory of Change' are emphasized throughout the text. Next, the authors take the reader down 'the road to results,' presenting procedures for evaluating projects, programs, and policies by using a 'Design Matrix' to help map the process. This road includes: determining the overall approach, formulating questions, selecting designs, developing data collection instruments, choosing a sampling strategy, and planning data analysis for qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method evaluations. The book also includes discussions on conducting complex evaluations, how to manage evaluations, how to present results, and ethical behavior--including principles, standards, and guidelines. The final chapter discusses the future of development evaluation. This comprehensive text is an essential tool for those involved in development evaluation.

"Programs aimed at the betterment of human welfare in the zones of turmoil and transition of the developing world face unprecedented challenges. This is why Ray Rist and Linda Morra's book is so important and timely. Nurtured by exceptional knowledge and experience, it captures in a convenient format the essentials of good evaluation practice in the field of development. Given its authoritative and up-to-date treatment of the real-life evaluation problems created by the complex and volatile operating environment for development, it belongs on the bookshelf of all evaluation and development professionals." --Robert Picciotto, former Director General, Evaluation, World Bank Group; Visiting Professor, King's College, London

"This book exemplifies everything I look for in an evaluation text: Well-tested material, carefully evaluated, proven in practice. Credible because done by people who know what they are talking about through experience and expertise. Content that teaches and exemplifies the profession's standards, and so is useful, practical, ethical, and accurate. Makes evaluation understandable, accessible, and doable. Communicates the importance and value of monitoring and evaluation. A good mix of theory and practice, methodologically solid, illustrated with relevant and understandable examples. Substance that is real-world and realistic, that is, grounded in the political, economic, cultural, and management realities of development. Narrative that both teaches and inspires. Those are the things I look for in a book and this book delivers on every criterion." --Michael Q. Patton, former President of the American Evaluation Association; author of 'Utilization-Focused Evaluation, and Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods'; independent evaluation and organizational development consultant

"Development evaluation is rapidly growing in developing countries. The book's structure and approach make it useful to a cross-section of users such as evaluation specialists and practitioners, policy makers, parliamentarians, public sector officials, and students of development evaluation. This book will make a significant contribution to development evaluation in the developing world." --Kabir Hashim, Member of Parliament, Sri Lanka; former Minister of Tertiary Education and Training; development evaluation consultant