ReliefWeb

Introduction

Why choose this method?

Evaluating the effectiveness of post-disaster interventions is an important but challenging task. Practitioners and donors alike have a shared interest in being able to assess the outcomes and impact of projects and donated funds for recovery, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. However, there has been wide acknowledgement of the difficulties in assessing the benefits of interventions, and there is a need for guidance to assist agencies in undertaking evaluations that are robust but affordable.

This guide aims to provide one reliable and practical method for identifying the contribution to change achieved by external interventions in the recovery period following disasters.

The approach presented here draws from and builds on valuable work by a range of authors – among them Catley et al. (2008), Proudlock et al. (2009), Roche (2010) and Stern et al. (2012). These and other resources are listed in Annex 2.

What is it for?

The purpose of the Contribution to Change approach is to identify how important and effective interventions have been in promoting people’s recovery.

It does so by assessing:

• the changes over time in people’s lives, with a focus on the extent to which their resources, livelihoods, and well-being have recovered and/or strengthened since the disaster;

• the role that interventions appear to have played in that recovery process.

These are not easy assessments to make. They require careful analysis using different sources of data, but ultimately judgements have to be made on the basis of the evidence available. The more detailed the data collection can be, the more strongly we can make these judgements. However, the design of this methodology is intended to lead to robust conclusions even if the resources for data collection are quite limited. The idea is to provide a methodology that can be readily taken up and adapted for use in the field (see Box 1).