Formative Evaluation

Abstract

Without formative evaluation, you may be embarking on a project that may not meet a real need, or one that may be constrained by external factors that you cannot control. Formative evaluation is especially important in community engagement and behaviour change projects as such interventions are often complex and therefore require careful monitoring of processes in order to respond to emergent properties and any unexpected outcomes. Forsaking formative evaluation may also mean that you are not able to observe and capture feedback that may improve the implementation of a project, and therefore its chance of successfully achieving the desired outcomes. Formative evaluation allows you to develop a better understanding of the process of change, and finding out what works, what doesn’t, and why. This allows you to gather the knowledge to learn and improve future project designs and implementation.