A Framework for Community-Led Developmental Evaluation

Unlike formative or summative evaluations, which seek to answer the questions; How can we improve what we’re doing? or How does what we’re doing compare to alternatives?, Developmental Evaluation asks a more open question: What should we we doing? This question is a natural parallel to the opening question of the Design Thinking process known as the Double Diamond; What should we be designing? The process goes on to ask a follow-on question: How should we be designing it? More specifically, these two questions address the design goals of Designing the Right Thing, and, Designing the Thing Right.

Implied in these two goals is the understanding that good or right design requires a deep understanding of the context in which the design is to be applied. Our Developmental Evaluation of the Synergia Transition and Resilience Climate Action Program had similar goals in that it sought not only to understand what we should be doing to support climate action in diverse communities, but also what this should look like in practice. The answer to these questions was arrived at after iterating on the program design in real time. That is, as evaluators, we were designing the program as we were evaluating it, so as to incoroporate learnings and test hypotheses.

Learn more about our evaluation and outcomes by viewing our framework here.