The WP10 team will co-design and co-implement monitoring and evaluation methods based on the interventions identified by Work Package 7, political mobilisation and transnational solidarity building; Work Package 8, access to legal remedies to deliver access to rights for those who move; and Work Package 9, the use of ICT to facilitate access to information and services. These work package teams will be undertaking the research and design for these interventions over the first several years of the Hub, based on the formative studies by the work package and corresponding country teams.

WP 10 will apply the principles of adaptive programming, which is an iterative approach to intervention development. Adaptive programming relies on strong collaboration between the partners who design and implement the intervention, stakeholders who utilise the intervention and the intervention evaluation team. Adaptive programming also relies on strong consideration of the context in which the intervention is undertaken, which indicates the importance of the Hub Country teams’ participation. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has defined adaptive programming as follows:

“Adaptive programming suggests, at a minimum, that development actors react and respond to changes in the political and socio-economic operating environment. It emphasises learning and the development practitioner is encouraged to adjust their actions to find workable solutions to problems that they may face.”

This approach is not dissimilar to ‘user-centred design’, which also utilises an iterative and participatory approach and regular feedback to promote adaptations and improvements in the intervention until they suit the needs of the ultimate user groups.

Specifically, WP 10 will use theory-based evaluation and process evaluation techniques to support the development of the interventions led by WPs 7, 8 and 9.

WP10 is designed to work with the teams designing and implementing the interventions and provide recursive feedback that can assist them to adapt the components of their intervention strategies. For example, WP10 evaluation input might assist the intervention teams to: identify their participants; consider effective modes of delivery; improve and tailor their content for their target groups; monitor uptake and consider unintended consequences. This form of evaluation is also intended to consider contextual influences on the intervention and elucidate causal mechanisms to help identify pathways of change. These types of process evaluations may rely on, for instance, quantitative or qualitative data, rapid assessment surveys and expert consultation. Methods will depend on the intervention designs and the potential data availability to assess change mechanisms and process indicators.

Further details of WP 10 approaches will be detailed once the interventions have been selected by WPs 7, 8 and 9.

Research Questions

  1. What is theory of change for each intervention?
  2. Who are the target populations for each intervention and why?
  3. What is the specific process of change for each intervention?
  4. What are the 'active ingredients' that influence change towards the articulated outcomes?
  5. What is not working or causing harm to the target beneficiaries?
  6. Who is the intervention working for and in which circumstances?
  7. What are the unanticipated outcomes (positive and negative)?

Contact

Cathy.Zimmerman@lshtm.ac.uk