In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the dominant approach for M&E will likely include monitoring and process or adequacy evaluations. During outbreaks it is less common for impact evaluations to be used. This is because impact evaluations are typically more costly (involving external staff and tighter controls on how data is collected), introduce ethical challenges (such as the use of control groups), and require a behavioural or health outcome measure (likely to be challenging to collect with quality at this time). For more information on why health measures are not widely used during outbreaks see this section. Instead, we recommend that project implementers prioritise assessing the progress of your intervention against predetermined behavioural and access targets related to the project’s outcomes.

Given the scale of COVID-19 there may be many organisations in your area collecting monitoring and evaluation data. To avoid duplication and data collection fatigue among your populations, try to coordinate your M&E processes with other organisations working in the same area.

Editors notes

Author: Matt Freeman, Sian White, Fiona Majorin

Reviewer: Peter Winch, Katie Greenland, Karine Le Roch

Last updated: 02.07.2020