Rapid Evaluations

Innovating for public sector decision making.

Rapid evaluations address the need for more timely data, and recommendations for improvements. They help decision makers to understand and learn from what works, what doesn’t, when and for whom to aid decision making in a shorter timeline. It is also an important tool for accountability, helping departments and entities to demonstrate uptake, and that work is of high quality and useful.

Rapid evaluations can reduce the costs and time of evaluation projects, promoteflexibility across relatively diverse exercises of evaluation enquiry, and utilise different approaches. Rapid evaluations are being used in our country partners’ evaluation systems, and can be done internally by officials, and/or involve an external consultant as a ‘facilitator’.

Twende Mbele has designed a toolkit on how to do rapid assessments, intended for use by officials commissioning evaluations, researchers and civil society.

Three countries have designed and adapted a guideline for designing and planning a rapid evaluation for the public sector. This guideline uses a structured approach to get answers to policy and program questions, while linking to other relevant government guidance. Training on the guideline (and further adaptations) are happening in all core country partners.

Primary data collection methods are qualitative – interviews, direct observations, focus group discussions, and so on – though quantitative techniques like surveys are often used. Data is typically collected and analyzed by field-based teams that are led by experienced evaluation professionals who have considerable knowledge of qualitative methods as well as rapid evaluation principles and techniques.