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What is this about?
Evaluation provides feedback and thus facilitates decision-making, for instance in adjusting the implementation of the intervention, designing the next cycle, or helping to redefine political priorities. In this context the formulation and follow-up of recommendations are key steps in the process.
What is the purpose?
Facilitating future decision-making is generally the main type of use of evaluation. Decision-makers' needs have, therefore, to be taken into account throughout the evaluation process to increase the chances of the evaluation being useful to them.
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What is the link between evaluation and decision-making?
Some evaluations are designed primarily to provide information for management decisions or for reform of the evaluated intervention. They are intended for operational actors in the field, management services, and the authorities responsible for the intervention or their partners. In this perspective, mid-term evaluation is to be preferred and careful attention needs to be paid to the formulation and follow-up of recommendations. These evaluations are referred to as formative.
Other evaluations are designed primarily to learn lessons from the experience and to serve decision-making in other contexts. In this perspective, ex post evaluation is the most appropriate and careful attention must be paid to the formulation and transferability of the lessons learned. These evaluations are referred to as summative.
Yet one has to be realistic: decision-makers will not necessarily follow the recommendations and lessons. The decision-making process almost always involves many actors and multiple factors, evaluation being only one of them.
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Advice for performing a decision-making oriented evaluation
- Hold targeted interviews, from the outset, in order to establish exactly what decision-makers expect and to anticipate the decision-making agenda.
- Target the questions and determine the evaluation schedule in relation to the decision-making process.
- Involve individuals in the reference group whose point of view is close to decision-makers'.
- Organise quality assessment, the drafting of documents and their dissemination with a view to decision-makers' needs.
- Emphasise the quality of recommendations and verify their operational feasibility from the decision-makers' point of view.
- Stick to the schedule to allow timely feedback in the decision-making process.
- Follow-up recommendations by asking the decision-makers concerned to respond rapidly to them and after one year to report on decisions made accordingly.
 Examples
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