Key terms
Evaluation (1) – Systematic assessment of the design, implementation and outcomes of an intervention. It involves understanding how an intervention is being, or has been, implemented and what effects it has, for whom and why. It identifies what can be improved and estimates its overall impacts and cost-effectiveness. (source: magenta book)
Evaluation (2) – Evaluating the project against some (pre-determined) criteria.
Evaluation methods – The way that information is collected and analysed in order to test theories and answer the evaluation questions.
Data- Collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally.
Data collection – The collection of information to use in evaluation; this can be quantitative or qualitative or a mixture of these.
Monitoring – The activity of monitoring the progress of a project
Qualitative data – Qualitative data is about words, ideas, and stories. It answers questions like “Why?” or “How?” and gives us a deeper understanding of people’s experiences.
Quantitative data – Quantitative data is about numbers. It answers questions like “How many?”, “How often?”, or “How much?”