Understanding M&E

M&E in S&D

Wherever sport and development experts meet, the claim is made that too little monitoring and evaluation has been done. Instead of lamenting the lack of research, it would be a good idea to read what is available, to learn from what has been published and to get going on collecting more data to analyse the effectiveness of sport being used as a tool for development.

What is monitoring?
Monitoring means scrutinising project activities to verify whether assumptions made when conceptualising the project can be verified. Everyone initiating or participating in a development project assumes that the project will have (positive) effects and will contribute to human development. Planning to verify the assumption(s) made is planning to collect data and thus to monitor the outcomes and effects of a project.

Why focus on planning?
To get monitoring right, we have to invest in the planning phase of a project. Assessing the local situation and understanding as much as possible about the root causes of the problem that hinder development is a first step in the direction of building a valid monitoring component for your project. Once sure of having gained a comprehensive overview of root causes, project aims and objectives need to be defined. Consequently, activities believed to lead to reaching the set objectives can be developed. For S&D projects, sport and play will be a key element of the activities conceptualised.

What are indicators?
To verify whether the S&D activities designed actually contribute to reaching the set objectives, we need to ask ourselves questions that dig deeper than simply whether we have succeeded in rolling out activities as planned. We have to ask ourselves, for example, how many people have to participate in the learning to create change? Or, what knowledge level must a target group reach in order to potentially master a situation better than before the start of the project.

Answering these questions with clear directives – e.g. a total number of participants or an increased rate in knowledge and skills – will make the project’s aims measurable. These directives are called indicators, as answering them, by accumulating monitoring data, gives you an indication of how successful you have been in reaching your project’s aims and objectives.

What evaluation entails
Collecting data through the use of conventional tools (e.g. questionnaires or surveys) or innovative tools as listed here will leave you with a wealth of information from participants. It is then necessary to analyse and evaluate how the fully or partly reached indicators actually contribute to the project reaching its overall objective. More information on how to technically go about analysing the collected information and what to keep in mind when interpreting it can be found on the Swiss Academy for Development website or on sportanddev.

This is the second in a series of articles on M&E in S&D. Don’t miss part three, which will focus on practical challenges in M&E.