• The Good Enough Guide
• Measuring Change
• Inter-Agency Standing Team
• Joint Evaluations
• Joint Needs Assessment (JNA)
• Cluster Accountability Initiative

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Donors increasingly want agencies to show how programs have made an impact. But measuring the impact of humanitarian interventions is notoriously difficult and there is a lack of guidance to help humanitarian agencies to do this.

The ECB Project is working with the University of East Anglia (UEA) on a guide to measuring change, which will provide new and innovative ways of identifying changes on the ground.

The first draft of the guide is currently under review by a technical editorial committee. Following feedback it will undergo another review process supported by a steering committee made up of World Vision, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Save the Children, Oxfam and our ECB Project staff.

The aim is to make the guide available to the sector by August 2013. The ECB Project would like to hear your views - use the comment feature below. For specific queries, please email Laure Anquez, Oxfam - lanquez(at)oxfam.org.uk

The Guide will:

• Advise on when and how to collect qualitative and quantitative data – including sampling exercises and training staff in data collection.
• Describe how to analyze data and link findings to their interventions.
• Cover both single- and multi-agency evaluation contexts.
• Help field staff to understand the impact of their own agency’s work and that of collective agencies.
• Show how to capture disaster-affected communities’ own coping mechanisms to demonstrate that these, combined with humanitarian agencies, have provided some effective solutions.

Robust and simple

The guide features a methodology designed to be robust enough to provide credible evidence but also simple enough to be used by field staff who might not be experienced researchers. It is designed to be used when rigorous impact evaluation is not feasible or cost effective.

A common challenge is when a standard baseline is not conducted at the beginning of the humanitarian response. As part of the guide the ECB Project is field testing a retrospective baseline designed to be used in the field 12-15 months after an emergency to generate a valuable baseline.

A focus on livelihoods

The guide suggests focusing on how households try to meet their basic needs (shelter, health, water, food and other goods) as a way of showing the impact of peoples’ own coping mechanisms and the impact of humanitarian interventions. The livelihoods-based approach  was validated during field tests.

How is this different to the existing Good Enough Guide?

The Good Enough Guide to Impacy Measurement and Accountability focuses on helping field staff to understand the best ways to communicate with disaster-affected communities and respond to their needs, while considering how to ensure greater accountability to beneficiaries. This new guide will build on this by strengthening evidence on which to base decision-making and reporting.

Download a summary or a short presentation.

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