What are other practical considerations when selecting an evaluation design?

Available resources 

  Considerations

What budget do you have?

– An evaluation should be proportional to the program size and value and what you wish to learn. A rule of thumb for evaluation is generally 10% of the total program budget but sometimes this is far higher. NB: An RCT generally costs $500,000+ so is only justifiable for bigger programs that have shown promise.
– A simple baseline/endline evaluation with direct beneficiaries is often the cheapest option, especially it can be self-administered or completed with support of facilitators before and after a program activity (for example  during the first and last session of a multi-week curriculum).
– Qualitative evaluation can be quite resource intensive, but good value for money to understand participant experiences of the program and processes of change (see slide on common mistakes with qualitative methods). 

What time do you have?

– To design and conduct a quantitative survey for an evaluation, you ideally need at least 6 months – to design relevant questions, ensure accurate translation, get ethical approval, train the research team and collect data. Analysis can take another 3 months.
– Qualitative evaluation also takes time. As a general guide, you should estimate a maximum of 3-4 in-depth interviews or 2 FGDs per researcher per day. It can take the same time to transcribe the data and again to synthesize and analyze the data.

 What technical expertise is available to you?