Evaluating development effectiveness

Abstract

"This work includes contributions from a wide range of distinguished academics and practitioners. The authors discuss the difficulty of defining development objectives to be evaluated; the relation between approaches to aid itself and approaches to aid evaluation; problems of evaluating the performance of development agencies; and the relative merits of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed evaluation techniques for judging performance. Several contributors look at how the quality of evaluative evidence can be improved, with particular attention to the potential of randomized experimental approaches. Sustainability and risk, which are critical factors in development effectiveness, are addressed in chapters on institutional aspects of sustainability and the application of Bayesian approaches to identify and mitigate critical risks. Practitioners give insights on building and satisfying demand for evaluation in developing countries and on the use of evaluation findings to improve decision making on development policies and programs." "This volume offers useful insights into methods for evaluating the effectiveness of development and assessing the performance of development aid and aid agencies."--BOOK JACKET.