On Thursday July 24, 2014, the Peacebuidling Evaluation Consortium (PEC) and the Network for Peacebuilding Evaluation (NPE) were pleased to have hosted the Thursday Talk on “Real-World Constraints: Managing Common Challenges in the Evaluation Process” with Mathias Kjaer, Evaluation Specialist at Social Impact.
This session deviated slightly from previous NPE Thursday Talks in both format and content. Prior to the session, participants were asked to view a video documentary of Social Impact’s mixed-method performance evaluation of the USAID “Growth with Equity in Mindanao III” (GEM-3) program implemented in conflict-affected areas in Mindanao. The session then featured a facilitated discussion regarding some of the common challenges experienced during the evaluation and how the evaluation team was able to address these. Three common challenges were highlighted, including: (1) the importance of narrowing down the list of primary evaluation questions; (2) the need to prepare contingency data collection sites given site inaccessibility; and (3) reconciling conflicting data during joint team analysis.
About the Speaker: Mr. Kjaer is a full time Evaluation Specialist at Social Impact (SI). He has managed several of SI’s priority contracts including SI’s evaluation of USAID’s implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness; a Democracy and Governance Assessment for USAID/Georgia to inform its next five-year strategic plan; a final performance evaluation of USAID/Georgia Judicial Administration and Management Reform project; a summative evaluation for The Carter Center on the effectiveness of an Irish Aid Block Grant to support peace, elections, and human rights programming; and is currently managing a major two-year contract with USAID/CMM to evaluate its People-to-People Reconciliation portfolio and pilot test its use of Developmental Evaluation methodology. Previously, Mr. Kjaer served as SI’s Business Development Manager where he was involved in over 80 proposals with USAID, MCC, DFID, AusAID, and other major international donors. He holds an MA in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and a BA-Honours from McGill University.
Find a link to the accompanying talk notes here.
View the video on GEM 3 here.
Read a summary of the conversation here (link is external)
Review Mathias’ Powerpoint here
Suggested Reading
Read the GEM 3 video brief here (link is external)
Read Social Impact’s concept note on mixed methods here (link is external)
Learn more about Randomized Response Technique here (link is external)