PROJECT PROPOSAL WRITING

MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Preamble
This section discusses proposed mechanisms and procedures for monitoring of project
operations to ensure that activities occur as planned, that they remain directed towards
stated objectives, and that appropriate corrective action is taken if required
Specifically, the discussion should indicate who will be responsible for preparing
periodic project progress and final technical reports and for the accounting of
expenditures

Learning Objectives
1. To understand what monitoring and evaluation mean.
2. To identify and explain the four steps of effective evaluation.
3. To know the various types of evaluation.

Learning Outcome
1. By the end of this topic, students will be able to understand the definition of
monitoring and evaluation.
2. By the end of this topic Students should be able to explain various types of
evaluation.
3. By the end of this topic, students will be able to know what monitoring involve.

Monitoring
It is the systematic and routine collection of information from projects and programmes
for four main purposes:
•To learn from experiences to improve practices and activities in the future;
•To have internal and external accountability of the resources used and the results
obtained;
•To take informed decisions on the future of the initiative;
•To promote empowerment of beneficiaries of the initiative
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Monitoring is a periodically recurring task beginning in the planning stage of a project or
programme. Monitoring allows results, processes and experiences to be documented and
used as a basis to steer decision-making and learning processes. Monitoring is checking
progress against plans. The data acquired through monitoring is used for evaluation.

Evaluation
It is assessing, as systematically and objectively as possible, a completed project or
programme (or a phase of an ongoing project or programme that has been completed).
Evaluations appraise data and information that inform strategic decisions, thus improving
the project or programme in the future.
Evaluations should help to draw conclusions about five main aspects of the intervention:
•relevance

•effectiveness

•efficiency

•impact

•sustainability

The evaluation component is two-fold: (1) product evaluation; and (2) process evaluation.
Product evaluation addresses results that can be attributed to the project, as well as the
extent to which the project has satisfied its desired objectives. Process evaluation
addresses how the project was conducted, in terms of consistency with the stated plan of
action and the effectiveness of the various activities within the plan. Most Federal
agencies now require some form of program evaluation among grantees. The
requirements of the proposed project should be explored carefully. Evaluations may be
conducted by an internal staff member, an evaluation firm or both. The applicant should
state the amount of time needed to evaluate, how the feedback will be distributed among
the proposed staff, and a schedule for review and comment for this type of
communication. Evaluation designs may start at the beginning, middle or end of a
project, but the applicant should specify a start-up time. It is practical to submit an
evaluation design at the start of a project for two reasons.

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The Four Steps of Effective Evaluation
Everyone evaluates. But why, when 1 walk into a room full of clients and suggest that we
need to evaluate what they are doing, oxygen is sucked through the vents, my clients
begin to sweat and many times, they shut down. Simply asking people about the outcome
or impact of their work is distress for three main reasons:
•There is a fear that evaluation is really an evaluation of them
•If evaluation is truly an evaluation of them, then their job might be in jeopardy
•Evaluation demonstrates a failure of their ideas
There is an element of truth in these beliefs because evaluation is used to measure a
person‘s job performance. In my line of work, as a health educator, I use evaluation as a
way to see how ideas and concepts impact the lives of the people they are meant to help.
This may contrast what evaluation purists believe, but I am going to gamble that most of
us are not out to implement complicated and large evaluations. When large-scale,
complicated evaluations are conducted, you may be confused with all the information
that comes back. This may cause you to lose the general focus of what you were seeking
to find out in the first place. When this happens, the data loses it value and you have no
plan for it. Eventually what you spent a great deal of time and money on ends up in some
file stored away, in a dark office or under an old pile of books. Instead of having useful
information you have nothing.
In this article, I want to take a few moments to spell out some simple ways to implement
an evaluation. I will provide illustrations of evaluation planning that will maximize your
time and deliver results you will value and use. Keep in mind, this article is focused on
those who need to evaluate simple community based programs, classes or activities.

Step one — Plan for Evaluation

More often than not, clients will call me in to evaluate the program they have just
implemented. When I ask them what their objectives are for this program, I usually get an
answer similar to, ―What do you mean by objectives? respond, ―What is the reason for creating and
delivering this program? After spending a bit of time determining what they expected to have come from
their program, we have created their set of program evaluations. But this is a classic case of putting the cart

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before-the-horse evaluation. The best way to do evaluation is to first plan for it while you are designing your
program. Remember that you also need to consider how you will share your findings.

Step Two — Decide How much Information you are Going to Need
How do you intend to learn about your program? Do you want to learn about changes in
behavior, knowledge or attitudes of your program participants? Will you need to have a
control group or can you simply sample from the individuals attending your program?
Will you need to conduct a pretest to gather baseline data? Is it your intent to measure
changes over time?
In planning this stage of your evaluation, you must have an idea about your target
audience and how accessible they are to you as well. If you have one shot to survey your
participants, this will influence how much information you can gather for your
evaluation. Conversely, if you have access to this same group for a long period of time,
over multiple occasions, you may be able to measure changes over time and determine, to
a greater degree, how your program has impacted their lives.
Knowing the accessibility of your target audience is a critical first step in deciding how
much information you can gather. But there are other important issues to consider when
determining how much information to gather, which leads to step three.

Step Three — Developing your Methods of Evaluation

Some major issues that influence how you design your evaluation tools include expense
and labor intensity. There are other issues that you need to consider when developing
your tools, which include literacy level, age, cultural, educational and language factors.

How useful will your evaluation results be if all your surveys are returned with no
responses on them? How different would your evaluation be if you were delivering it to
an audience of third graders? Obviously, you will need to design a method that is child
sensitive. Conversely, if you are working with a group of seniors who are averse to filling
out another form, you will need to consider evaluation techniques that will more
appropriately determine program outcomes.

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Types of Evaluation
Methods of evaluation incorporate elements of time and type. They can take place before,
during and after a program is implemented. Once you have determined your program
outcomes and how much information you are going to need, you will need to decide the
best way to gather your data. The types of data fall into four categories: formative,
process, impact and outcomes. For each of these categories there are specific places and
ways to gather data. Types of evaluation include:

Formative
It takes place in the lead up to the project, as well as during the project in order to
improve the project design as it is being implemented (continual improvement).
Formative evaluation often lends itself to qualitative methods of inquiry
Formative evaluation, including pretesting, is a way to determine where your target
audience is prior to implementing your program. When you are able to see where your
audience is prior to delivering your program, you can better develop content and styles
for educating them.

Tools for use in formative evaluation: readability tests, surveys, focus groups and
individual, in-depth interviews.

Process
Process evaluation examines the journey involved in implementing a program or activity.
It helps you look at how the implementation process is working and where you may have
to adjust the program to better suit participant or situational needs.

Impact
When you want to find out if what you did made a difference in someone‘s life, you
would need to get information after a period ranging between 5 years to 10 years. This

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type of information will let you know whether or not participants gained any knowledge
because of what you taught them or experienced an attitude or belief shift because of
what you taught them.
Impact evaluation describes the outputs of your inputs. It can also describe other things
that color in an otherwise black and white picture. Besides the gains in knowledge or shift
in attitudes, impact data can measure expressed intentions of the target audience, shortterm or intermediate
behavior shifts (purchasing sunscreen) and policies initiated or other
institutional changes made.

Tools for use in impact evaluation: pretests and posttests, baseline surveys prior to
attending a class or activity, follow-up surveys after attending an event, class or activity,
clinical data (especially if you are using a class to influence a health condition, you will
want to measure physical changes in your participants).

Outcome
Because the focus of this article is more about common sense evaluation, you will not
necessarily need to conduct outcome evaluation. However, outcome evaluation is
important to know about because it is the most comprehensive of the four evaluation
types and focuses on the long-range results of the program and changes or improvements
in health status as a result. In everyday type of program evaluation, these types of
evaluations are rare because you don‘t have the ability to keep track of the participants in
the program; the program lacks staff for the intensive follow-up and generally a lack of
funds to implement this type of evaluation.
Information obtained from an impact study may include changes in morbidity and
mortality, changes in absenteeism from work or school, long-term maintenance of desired
behavior or rates of those who might leave the ―study.‖

Tools for use in Outcome Evaluation: print media review, public surveys (telephone
surveys of self-reported behavior), studies of public behavior or health change (i.e. data
on physician visits or changes in public‘s health status) and death and hospitalization

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data.

Differences between Evaluation and Monitoring

Evaluation
Is a periodic assessment of the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and/or
sustainability of an activity or intervention;

Is a systematic search for answers about an intervention (project, program, or

policy); and
Measures the effects of an intervention and compares them with the goals and objectives of the
intervention

Monitoring
•Involves continuous or ongoing collection and analysis of information about
implementation to review progress;
•Compares actual progress with what was planned so that adjustments can be made
in implementation; and
•Is an internal activity that is the responsibility of those who manage
implementation procedures, thus representing a good management practice
In general, monitoring is integral to evaluation. During an evaluation, information from
previous monitoring processes is used to understand the ways in which the project or
programme developed and stimulated change.
Monitoring focuses on the measurement of the following aspects of an intervention:
•On quantity and quality of the implemented activities (outputs: What do we do?
How do we manage our activities?)
•On processes inherent to a project or programme (outcomes: What were the
effects /changes that occurred as a result of your intervention?)
•On processes external to an intervention (impact: Which broader, long-term
effects were triggered by the implemented activities in combination with other
environmental factors?)
The evaluation process is an analysis or interpretation of the collected data which delves
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deeper into the relationships between the results of the project/programme, the effects
produced by the project/programme and the overall impact of the project/programme.

Reflective Questions
Explain the meaning of evaluation and monitoring.
Discus the various types of evaluation
Critically analyze the differences between monitoring and evaluation.

Reference
Blake, R and Bly, R. (2011) The Elements of Business [Link].

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