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International and Cross Cultural Evaluation

The power of story in adapting outcome harvesting to different contexts

Wednesday, October 11, 2023
4:15 PM – 5:15 PM ET
Location: White River Ballroom C

Location: White River Ballroom C

Abstract Information: This multi-paper session presents four examples of how Outcome Harvesting (OH) has been applied in different sectors and regions, namely public health, digital for development, education, Africa and Europe. OH is easily adaptable to these contexts, while consistently able to illustrate the story of these wide-ranging interventions. Chelsea will share how OH was used to evaluate the impact of a public health management and leadership training program in Kenya, to illustrate if and how graduates were contributing to health system-level changes. Cesare will discuss the evaluation of a public-private partnership aimed at reducing 'educational poverty' among youth in seven Italian regions using a combination of theory-oriented evaluation and OH. Reagan will discuss how OH was used to track and document the outcomes and successes of the UDB i-Growth Accelerator program, which supports innovation start-ups in Uganda. OH facilitated storytelling as a means of communicating the program's success stories to a wider audience.

Relevance Statement: Outcome Harvesting has proven particularly useful in complex interventions when it is not possible to concretely define what an intervention aims to achieve. Unlike other methods, outcome harvesting does not measure progress against predetermined indicators, but rather collects evidence of what has changed, and then working backwards, determines if and how an intervention contributed to that change. When gathering evidence of what has changed after an intervention, evaluators and participants write an outcome statement together - a story really of what happened, why it was important, and how the intervention contributed to that outcome. Examined collectively, these outcome statements tell the story of the intervention in all its nuance.

Presentations:

  • 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM ET
    Telling training's story: adapting outcome harvesting to evaluate a public health management and leadership training program in Kenya

    Presenter: Chelsea Horváth, MPP (she/her/hers) – Caribou Digital

  • 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM ET
    The use of Outcome Harvesting in a theory-based and learning-oriented evaluation: some considerations arising from a field-research in Italy

    Presenter: Cesare Rossi (he/him/his) – University of Pisa, Department of Political Science

  • 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM ET
    Using Outcome Harvesting to tell the story of Innovation Start-up Grants: The Case of I-Growth Accelerator Programme

    Presenter: Reagan Ronald Ojok, n/a – Ministry of Water and Environment