Ensuring Quality for Evaluation

Lessons from Auditors

Abstract

This article addresses ways to enhance the quality of evaluations with weak designs through a variety of quality assurance practices. Many types of evaluations are restricted in the types of designs they can use. Evaluations of development programs with widely dispersed projects in different countries are often a case in point, where the design uses visits to a number of dispersed sites, interviews with staff and stakeholders, and reviews of documentation to draw conclusions. These interview-based evaluations are quite similar in methodological approach to many performance audits. National audit offices devote considerable resources to their quality assurance practices, and, for the most part, the quality of their performance audits is not questioned. It is argued that evaluations, and not only interview-based ones, could usefully adopt many of the quality assurance practices used by national audit offices to ensure the quality of their products.