Qualitative Methods
Tripti Pande, MScPH (she/her/hers)
Senior Officer, Learning Evidence and Impact
Pact, United States
Tripti Pande, MScPH (she/her/hers)
Senior Officer, Learning Evidence and Impact
Pact, United States
Tripti Pande, MScPH (she/her/hers)
Senior Officer, Learning Evidence and Impact
Pact, United States
Lody Peng, n/a
Deputy Chief of Party
Pact, United States
Sum Setha, n/a
Senior Officer, Monitoring & Evaluation
Pact, United States
Location: Grand Ballroom 8
Abstract Information: Due to complex implementation environments, the evaluation field has a variety of tools to be used for complexity-responsive monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL). This includes qualitative tools such as Outcome Harvesting (OH), Outcome Mapping (OM), Most Significant Change (MSC), process tracing, etc. While each method can be used individually, the combination of methods can help provide a holistic impact story as well as deepen the project’s understanding of the data. The Pact-led Women’s Entrepreneurs Act (WE Act) project in Cambodia seamlessly integrated three complexity-responsive methodologies including OH, OM and MSC throughout its five years of implementation. The use of all three methodologies assisted the project in understanding impact from the perspective of local partner organizations (OH and OM), target beneficiaries (MSC) and other local stakeholders (MSC). It also helped the project adapt throughout its implementation and identify sustainable activities. This demonstration session aims to present the complementarity of the results from the three methodologies which assisted in telling a comprehensive story on the impact of the WE Act project from various perspectives. Participants will walk away with knowledge on how to use this combination of methods, ways to analyze the combined results, specific lessons learned from this approach and recommendations for future programming.
Relevance Statement: The use of more complexity-responsive monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) approaches has increased over the past decade. This is largely due to the complex operating environments in which programs are implementing as well as the politically sensitive environments around the world. The use of qualitative approaches such as Outcome harvesting (OH), Outcome mapping (OM) and Most significant change (MSC) are increasingly important in such contexts as quantitative approaches are often unable to capture the nuances related to thoughts and/or feelings of project participants. The Women Entrepreneurs Act (WE Act) project, implemented by Pact in Cambodia, aims to increase resources, agency and achievements of young women in Cambodia through women’s economic empowerment (WEE). As there are no existing standardized measures on the latter, the project quickly understood that qualitative tools will be substantially important during the life of the project to understand project impact. Numbers can only say so much. The project adopted all three aforementioned methodologies to collect stories and narratives on project level outcomes and impact. This assisted in complementing the quantitative data and providing context to the numbers. This demonstration sessions aims to highlight Pact’s approach to conducting these methodologies, results of the holistic program impact and lessons learned for future women’s economic empowerment programming. Demonstration participants will takeaway knowledge on how to use this combination of methods, ways to analyze the combined results and specific lessons learned from this approach. The demonstration aligns directly with the conference theme “The Power of Telling a Story”as it emphasizes the importance of stories in these qualitative evaluation methodologies. Further, the stories assisted in understanding perspectives from various stakeholders in the project including the target population, local partners and local stakeholders. Further, the methodologies helped support relationality and contextualize the monitoring findings. The demonstration will be submitted to the Qualitative Methods Topical Interest Group (TIG) as it aligns directly with the TIG’s mission to promote innovation of qualitative methods and enables evaluators to understand multiple ways of knowing and being.