Current Challenges in Development Evaluation

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, the development industry has changed rapidly and now presents evaluators with a series of new challenges.This article considers this process of change. It argues that there has been a move away from a `project-based' approach to a broader vision of development centred on the Millennium Development Goals, which has led to a change of the evaluation approach: from an assessment of outputs to an evaluation of results. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of ways in which the development process is conceptualized demands increasingly sophisticated and interpretive approaches to evaluation.Whilst there will remain space for positivist approaches in certain sectors of the industry, it is increasingly likely that other approaches will become more dominant.