Assessing the 'true impact' of development assistance in the Gaza Strip and Tokelau: 'Most Significant Change' as an evaluation technique

Abstract

The democratic evaluative tradition has sought to change evaluation practice towards approaches and techniques that generate diverse forms of knowledge and foster public deliberation over a programme's merit and worth. This paper locates one evaluation method, 'Most Significant Change' (MSC), within this tradition. Drawing on two different evaluations - one, of a comprehensive economic sector assistance package to the Government of Tokelau, and the other of a psychosocial and academic support intervention for pre-adolescent children in conflict-affected regions of the Gaza Strip - the paper provides evidence of how MSC can capture unexpected outcomes, act as a tool for real-time formative learning, and expose the competing theories, logics and values behind programme activity. The examples within the paper also provide evidence of how MSC begins to redistribute traditional power relationships in assessing the merit and worth of observed impacts by increasing the legitimacy of local programme knowledge, and engaging all parties in evaluative decisions. By doing so, MSC, the paper argues, better serves the purposes of learning, improvement and mutual accountability which should sit at the core of good development practice.