Overview of Evaluations

Evaluations are conducted for a variety of reasons, such as for management and administrative purposes or for planning and policy purposes, to assess if the project meets the accountability requirements of funding agencies (Chelimsky in New Dir. Program Eval. 1978:1–18, 1978). The scope of each evaluation depends on the purposes for which it is being conducted. The other aspects to be considered include how the evaluation questions are asked and the research procedures are conducted. Evaluations cover several related activities, interventions, monitoring of program implementation, and assessment of program utility (Rossi and Freeman in Evaluation: a systematic approach. Sage, 1982). Evaluation is a systematic and objective assessment of an on-going or completed implementation, its design, implementation and results. The aim is to determine the relevance and response to the objectives, impact and sustainability (Austrian Development Agency in Guidelines for project and program evaluations. Austria, 2009).