Disaster & Emergency Management Evaluation
Ghazia Aslam, PhD
Senior Advisor, Technical Assistance and Evaluation
EnCompass LLC
Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States
Lauren Else, n/a
Evaluation Specialist
EnCompass LLC, United States
Location: White River Ballroom D
Abstract Information: Fragility, conflict, and violence are critical development challenges that have increased dramatically worldwide, with most of the world's poor living in conflict and crisis contexts. As the aid to these contexts has expanded significantly, so has the need for research, evaluation and learning. Evaluations in FCV contexts have unique needs and challenges, and evaluators must understand these differences and adapt their practices accordingly. In this session, we discuss these challenges and facilitate a discussion on how, as evaluators, we can respond to them.
To start the session, the chairperson will provide a background on the methodological, ethical and operational challenges of conducting research and evaluation in crisis and conflict contexts. The chairperson and facilitators will highlight specific challenges for each aspect, including the methodological challenge of establishing attribution in complex settings where outcomes are highly vulnerable to external factors, the operational challenge of navigating security situations while ensuring inclusiveness of research and avoiding "bunkerization," and ethical challenge of extraction of stories from the communities without giving back.
For the discussion, participants will break out into three small groups. Each group will discuss the implications of one aspect of the challenges (methodological, ethics, or operations) and will discuss how they can mitigate these challenges. After the small group discussions, the chairperson will request each group to present a summary of their discussion and facilitate a conversation to draw out some concrete lessons.
Relevance Statement: Fragility, conflict, and violence are critical development challenges that have increased dramatically worldwide, with the poorest living in crisis and conflict contexts. As the aid to these contexts has expanded significantly, so has the need for research, evaluation, and learning. Conducting useful research and evaluation in these contexts is complex, given the need to navigate methodological challenges (such as attributability, context dependence, and vulnerability of outcomes, among others), operational challenges (such as security), sensitive relationships, and unique power dynamics. The complexity of implementing and conducting research and evaluations in crisis and conflict settings requires a higher level of caution to prevent unethical or ineffective approaches that can lead to unusable evidence and harm.
The topic of the think tank provides a timely and critical space to discuss the opportunities and challenges and collaboratively generate lessons on conducting meaningful and utilizable evaluations in these complex settings. The discussion will focus on approaches, methods, ethics, and strategies for aligning evaluative activities to changing contexts and sharing ideas on the usability of evaluation. Participants will leave the session with a better understanding of strategies to mitigate methodological, operational and ethical risks and the various methods to mitigate risk for participants and will learn about the strategies for incorporating stronger ethical considerations and rigorous methods suited to these complex contexts. The session format allows participants to share their experiences with challenges and best practices in conducting research and evaluation in crisis and conflict contexts, thereby crowdsourcing knowledge and expanding our repertoire of possible solutions. The discussion will advance the evaluation practice and allow researchers to ethically tell authentic stories of individuals in situations of vulnerability and ensure their voices are integral to the evidence.