Evaluation is a core component of any violence against women prevention strategy.
It is part of the holistic process of planning, implementing and evaluating. It is important to evaluate prevention programs to gauge the success of a program for accountability, credibility and transparency, and to develop and strengthen the program.
Considerations
Identify who the evaluation is for and what they need to know.
Ensure the evaluation has a well-understood purpose
Include data for all the different groups including gender.
Involve target groups/populations in the evaluation process to have a sense of engagement and empowerment in the change process and to better understand what works and what doesn’t
Who is evaluating your work? Evaluation can be undertaken by an external consultant or conducted internally with a clear understanding of evaluation principles and the right tools.
Any evaluation of prevention strategies should follow the feminist principles of primary prevention. A feminist evaluation emphasises the importance of participatory approaches, empowerment and using evaluation for social justice.
What tools should you use?
Ensure the methodology applied for this work is the one that is continuous, iterative and ongoing, and asks many questions.
Develop a program logic that:
is a clear visual representation that describes the sequence of events to bring about change.
details the resources of the program and activities undertaken and what will be produced through those activities.
describes the short, medium and longer-term outcomes.
Develop an evaluation framework that:
supports the program logic
details process and impact indicators, data collection methods, responsibilities and timelines.
is not a static template to be completed at a particular stage of the program, but a flexible document that evolves with the program.
Share your findings
Communicating the findings from your evaluation, especially with funders and key stakeholders, is important.
Set aside time and resources to plan for:
what they need to know
how you are going to tell them
how to ‘drip feed’ information
how to generate funders’ interest in your strategy and final evaluation report
Counting on change: A guide to prevention monitoring provides guidance to policy makers and researchers on how to comprehensively measure progress towards the prevention of violence against women at the population-level.
The tool examines the assumption that evaluation instruments we have at our command for measuring are adequate, effective, and sensitive. The tool examines these assumptions in the context of women’s rights, gender equality, and women’s empowerment work.
