Impact Assessment of BDS and Training Programmes
Dear Ekanath,
Good evening and thank you for expanding on these. And the reference to the DCED guidelines, which is useful for everyone participating in the discussions. I urge everyone to google their website. In terms of the indicators, we can have another entire discussion there, so that we are able to go beyond the output / activity level indicators to more outcome oriented ones. Those that measure the results of what has been done (outputs), for instance number of new businesses started, increased sales and incomes of the business oweners, number of SMEs and amount of credit accessed, number of new jobs. these will better show results.
I am happy you share the notion that control growup methodology is the best. I agree as it helps us to answer to the question of attribution. In other words, did the intervention contributed to the results? Would the same result not have been achieved without your intervention. This is really key. We need to exchange more on this. Jealous
Dear Jealous
Thanks for your elaborative response. Yes impact assessment on BDS interventions is one of the most debatable issues. Another issue is time frame. According to the DCED standards, the standard time frame for impact assessment is 2 years . another critical issue is attribution which you have raised / questioned in your respond. I totally agree with you that actual result attribution is another challenge. Without our particular interventions there might be many other interventions and supports, therefore while attributing the results/ impacts we have to consider the element of “coping in” and “crowding in “aspects. As per the DCED guideline/ standards, if it is possible we need to distinguish the direct and indirect results in our result chain logic.
Dear all, Please visit the webpage www.enterprise-development.org for more DCED guideline and result measurement standards.
With best regards,
Ekanath
