Developing Common Measures in Evaluation Capacity Building: An Iterative Science and Practice Process

A fundamental reason for doing evaluation capacity building (ECB) is to improve program outcomes. Developing common measures of outcomes and the activities, processes, and factors that lead to these outcomes is an important step in moving the science and the practice of ECB forward. This article identifies a number of existing ECB measurement tools and maps their concepts onto a common framework. This mapping clarifies consensus as well as facilitates selection of instruments and indicators for researchers and practitioners. The framework is an updated version of the Integrated ECB Model (IECB) that was developed from the ECB literature and used in a research synthesis of ECB empirical literature by the author and colleagues. The convergence of concepts revealed by the mapping understates the convergence with other models and literature as the mapping is limited to instruments and does not include concepts from other frameworks or the broader literature. ECB readiness and causal sequencing of activities and outcomes are explored by the use of factor analysis using data from the research synthesis. The findings suggest that the organizational outcomes of ECB include doing and using evaluations, planning future evaluations, and evaluating as part of staff jobs. Mainstreaming indicators were routinizing evaluation, providing opportunities to learn about evaluation, creating new relationships with other organizations and planning future ECB efforts. The results confirm that building evaluation capacity can be distinguished from mainstreaming and suggest that other factors such as evaluative and general organizational capacity, culture, leadership and funding are ECB readiness factors that can enhance ECB outcomes.