Monitoring and Evaluating Advocacy

From the Executive Summary
"This scoping study has attempted to identify and document how various agencies and institutions have approached the assessment of advocacy. The work was limited in scale, and focused in particular upon the approaches of NGOs [non-governmental organisations]. The insights and ideas from this study will contribute to a three-year action research project to be undertaken by ActionAid and partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This research aims to develop appropriate methodologies for assessing the value of advocacy work, methodologies that reinforce a transparent and co-operative way of working, and strengthen external agencies' role in helping to create space for marginal groups to have a voice in decision-making fora.

This scoping study also sets out ActionAid's approach to rights based development and the central role of advocacy work in supporting and enabling people to better negotiate, on their own behalf, for their basic needs and basic rights.

The study explores a number of frameworks that organisations have been developing that suggest what could be looked at when monitoring and evaluating advocacy work. It stresses that these frameworks are merely tools that help us gain an overview of advocacy work. They are not intended to be rigorously filled in. For this reason, instead of promoting one framework as the "correct" one, the study sets out a number of frameworks that look at similar issues from different perspectives for the reader to pick and choose what elements are most useful to them. Again though many frameworks talk about work at different levels, the study does not give any weighting for the different levels. This weighting will vary depending on the specific advocacy goal..."

"...The study looks at a broad range of approaches for analysing advocacy work but very few in terms of methods and tools that might be used to assess change with different stakeholder groups. This again highlights the gaps in current practice. Currently, standard methodological approaches involve semi-structured interviews, group-based discussions, surveys and questionnaires..."

Click here to download an English version of the full study as a PDF document.

Click here to download a Spanish version of the full study as a PDF document.