EPAR TECHNICAL REPORT #300
Fri, 08/21/2015
AUTHORS: Pierre Biscaye, Melissa LaFayette, Andrew Martin, Monica Richardson, Zoë True, C. Leigh Anderson
ABSTRACT:
This report reviews approaches to results measurement used by multilateral and bilateral donor organizations and highlights trends and gaps in how donors measure and report on their performance. Our review consists of assessing donor organizations in terms of their institutional design and levels of evaluation for results measurement, their organizational processes for measuring types of results including coordination and alignment with recipients, outputs and implementation, outcomes and impacts, and costs and effectiveness, and their processes for reporting and using results information. We collect evidence on 12 bilateral organizations and 10 multilateral organizations. The evidence review includes multi-country reviews of aid effectiveness, peer reviews by other donor organizations, donor evaluation plans and frameworks, and donor results and reporting documents. The report is based on an accompanying spreadsheet that contains the coded information from the 22 donor organizations. We find that donors report several types of results, but that there are challenges to measuring certain results at the aggregate donor level, due to challenges with funding and coordination for results measurement at the project, country, portfolio, and donor levels. Approaches to results measurement vary across donor organizations. We identify some trends and differences among groups of donors, notably between bilateral and multilateral donors, but overall there are no clear delineations in how donors approach results measurement.
See also EPAR Technical Report #299: Evaluating Country-Level Government M&E Systems.
Check out our series of posts on donor-level results measurement on the Development Gateway blog:
- Evaluating Donor-Level Results Measurement Systems
- What Systems and Processes Do Donors Use for Measuring Aid Effectiveness?
- What Results Measures Do Donors Use to Evaluate Aid Effectiveness?
- How Do Donors Use the Results Data They Collect?
TYPE OF RESEARCH: Literature Review
RESEARCH TOPIC CATEGORY: Development Finance & Policy; Aid & Other Development Finance; Monitoring & Evaluation
POPULATION(S): Countries/Governments
GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS: Global
Downloadable Documents
Full Report
Results Coding Spreadsheet