Impact Evaluation: Methodological and Operational Issues
This quick reference provides an overview of methods available for evaluating impacts of development programs, and addresses some common operational concerns about their practical application. It istailored for staff and consultants of the Asian Development Bankand their counterparts in developing member countries, althoughequally useful...
Impact Evaluation: Methodological and Operational Issues
The logical framework (“log frame”) is used to assess the operational flow of project inputs and outputs and is common in the design of projects, programs, and strategies. However, the higher-order project results (“outcomes” and “impacts”) are rarely measured in practice. Oftentimes, evaluation studies focus only on...
Third Generation PCIA: Introducing the Aid for Peace Approach
This article presents the newly developed Aid for Peace approach. The Aid for Peace approach builds on the debate of “Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment” and presents a further development of this debate. The Aid for Peace approach is a multi-purpose and multi-level...
More Field Notes: Critical Issues when Implementing PCIA
We should not overestimate what can be achieved by a workshop. During a good workshop, the atmosphere is often very nice and people leave feeling empowered and enthusiastic. However, this feeling can quickly be counteracted by the workload of an intensive job in a...
Ways of Moving Forward: A Community of Practice and Learning
It is clear that there are strong linkages between the social, economic and political spheres of conflict, as well as the macro, meso and micro levels. However, linking need not mean conflating. For example, an irrigation project in rural Kyrgyzstan cannot be expected to...
Field Notes: Fighting Commodification and Disempowerment in the Development Industry: Things I Learned About PCIA in Habarana and Mindanao
Elsewhere, I have described the commodification of peacebuilding as: “a process in which peacebuilding as an idea and as a set of practices is (to be churlishly provocative) simply stuffed into the standard operating systems of the standard [actors] who do the same old...
The Utility and Dilemmas of Conflict Sensitivity
The phrase ‘conflict-sensitive’ or ‘conflict sensitivity’ has been at the margins of development practice since at least 1999. The idea of conflict sensitivity owes a great deal to diverse literature and thinking on Peace and Conflict Impact Assessment (PCIA), though PCIA is not the only...
Participatory Evaluation and Critical Peace Research: A Precondition for Peacebuilding
Next to evaluation, the term ‘peace and conflict impact assessment’ (PCIA) emerged and became very fashionable among practitioners, researchers and donors. It was used to emphasize the need to reflect the likely peace and conflict impacts of policies or interventions, including aid programmes. Some interesting...
Extending the Framework of Inquiry: Theories of Change in Conflict Interventions
Some of the most prevalent distinctions in both the academic and programme literatures about the causes of conflict and theories of change centre around levels-of-analysis – or whether change efforts focus primarily on individuals, on inter-group relationships, or on structures and systems. Using a levels-of-analysis...
PCIA as a Peacebuilding Tool
Let me offer a hypothesis for which I have no evidence. It is that the PICA approach is not yet sufficiently user friendly. When I look at Bush’s framework from the point of view of projects in the field, my sense is that the large...
PCIA Methodology: A Development Practitioner’s Perspective
Existing PCIA frameworks are often neither specific nor do they propose convincing practical approaches. They often remain vague with respect to the relationship between development cooperation and violent conflicts. In addition, the objectives of the various PCIA approaches that are proposed differ significantly. While some view...
Towards a Unified Methodology: Reframing PCIA
First, the debate on PCIA should give greater consideration to the needs of aid agencies, particularly as their interest in reflection and institutional learning has largely been overlooked. Second, generic peacebuilding frameworks for evaluation are likely to be flawed due to the variety of conflict situations,...