Checklists Program teams – and the evaluators they work with – will need to set out the ethical principles they will adhere to with their M&E and develop a set of protocols they will follow in order to consistently reflect these in design and delivery. The following principles are a helpful starting point for team discussions about ethics in relation to your program M&E.
1. Respectful: The wellbeing, safety and dignity of those conducting and participating in M&E activities should always be prioritised. M&E activities should not be unreasonable in terms of how much they ask of people and should not risk retraumatising anyone. Proactive efforts should be made to reduce any possible distress to those involved. This should include ensuring that all team members know when and how to escalate disclosures of violence and are knowledgeable about how to prioritise safety and protect confidentiality throughout.
2. Valuable: All M&E activities need to be designed to inform efforts to achieve positive change in order to prevent VAW. To achieve this, women and women’s rights organisations need to be involved in defining the markers of success for EVAW programs and the scope and ambition of efforts to monitor and evaluate them. Program and evaluation teams should share findings more widely, beyond their own organisations, including with program participants, ensuring that lessons are well communicated so they can be accurately interpreted and used to inform ongoing work and future EVAW policies and programs.
3. Professional: M&E activities should be well designed, tailored to local context and delivered by people with the necessary experience and skills. M&E approaches need to be methodologically robust and build upon experience and best practice to-date. M&E team members should be carefully selected, receive specialized training and ongoing support so they can manage the particular sensitivities and risks involved. Collecting data on experiences of violence can cause further harm to survivors. Fieldworkers need to be trained to refer women who request assistance to available local services and support. Violence-related questions should only be incorporated into existing data collection methods or into wider evaluations if they can meet safety and ethical considerations.
4. Inclusive: M&E approaches should be inclusive, reflecting diversity among women. This means acknowledging that women are not one homogenous group with a consistent set of experiences. Different groups of women may interact with, experience and be impacted by interventions in very different ways. Adopting an intersectional lens when designing and delivering M&E activities means explicitly acknowledging this and exploring potential differences in findings so they reflect a more nuanced picture.
