intelligent measurement

Assumptions, Evaluation and Development

October 9, 2006 at 8:56 pm 2 comments

At the international conference of the European Evaluation Society, I attended an interesting workshop on Assumptions Based Comprehensive Development Evaluation Framework (ABCDEF) presented by Professor Osvaldo Feinstein, evaluation consultant. The main thrust of his workshop was to challenge us to consider fully the assumptions that are made in development projects – and consequently the impact on evaluation. He has created a guide to what we should consider when exploring assumptions, namely: Incentives, Capacities, Adoption, Risk, Uncertainty and Sustainability. Cleverly, it makes the acronym Icarus, whom we all know flew too close to the sun which melted the wax holding together his wings. And that is the underlying theory of Professor Feinstein, as he put it:

“An unexamined assumption can be very dangerous!”

More information on ABCDEF can be found in the Sage Handbook of Evaluation.

Glenn

Entry filed under: Development evaluation, Trainings, Seminars & Conferences.