Qualitative Methods
Meri Ghorkhmazyan, Ma
Senior Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Mercy Corps Global, United States
Meri Ghorkhmazyan, Ma
Senior Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
Mercy Corps Global, United States
Thomas Scialfa, PhD
Senior Technical Lead MEL
Mercy Corps Global, United States
Thomas Scialfa, PhD
Senior Technical Lead MEL
Mercy Corps Global, United States
Josephine Gambade, Ma
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Advisor
Mercy Corps Global, Belgium
Location: White River Ballroom D
Abstract Information: Do you struggle to articulate qualitative indicators in your monitoring, evaluation and learning plans? Are you constantly looking for resources and guidance on how to set targets for qualitative indicators and how to use that to tell the story of your impact? If you do, this session is for you. Mercy Corps has developed a guidance on how to apply qualitative inquiry to program Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning, and what to do if indicators are not appropriate or relevant. During this session we will discuss a conceptual framework of qualitative inquiry and demonstrate how to develop indicators, and how to apply qualitative questions should you be unable to articulate specific indicators and targets for qualitative change you want to achieve. We will compare and contrast application of qualitative inquiry for research and monitoring, and discuss their differences, as well as work together to define a set of qualitative indicators for the provided scenario. Those will include discussions around types of indicators, types of target setting frameworks, frequency of data collection, analysis, use, as well as combining qualitative and quantative indicators to tell the program story with evidence.
Relevance Statement: Many Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning practitioners struggle to articulate adequate measures of change to monitor progress of programs from a qualitative standpoint. With those limitations they often heavily rely on qualitative research methods. While qualitative research and evaluations bring a lot of value at the end of the program to help programs evaluate the worth and merit of the activities and interventions, their use is limited and often does not allow the teams make periodic adaptations. This session will help practitioners discuss methodological implications of using qualitative inquiry as a monitoring tool. Sometimes designing indicators is not possible because the program staff do not have enough knowledge and information about how the change is experienced or how the change will happen in the program context. In those cases we offer monitoring with qualitative questions. Monitoring questions allow broader exploration of the phenomenon being observed and arms the teams with the knowledge to design qualitative indicators and targets. This session will also share instrumentation, analysis and use of qualitative data for monitoring, that can be used to adapt programs and improve interventions. This is a significant progress in the field of monitoring, and helps to bridge evaluation and research practice areas with routine monitoring. The session is developed on Qualitative Indicators for monitoring toolkit designed by Mercy Corps. The Toolkit also will be shared with the practitioners, which has lots of guidance, templates and resources that can be used by them in their daily work. Qualitative monitoring is new and has not yet been fully applied to monitoring practice. This session will enable practitioners with important knowledge to help drive adaptive management practices and improve the depth of our program story telling.