Programme planning and evaluation

Recommended read: "Program Evaluation: Forms and approaches" by John Owen, 3rd edition, 2006 Published by Allen and Unwin, Australia. For anyone considering evaluation and programme planning for EE I strongly recommend you check out this book. It’s designed for practitioners working in interventions to address social issues, at any level (policy, large regional programmes or small programmes and events). The book helps you choose from five types of evaluation e.g. proactive, monitoring or impact, depending one what stage of development you are at, and what your information needs are. It gives a very clear explanation as to how to develop and implement your evaluation plans. It also has information about the generic issues around evaluation such as involving stakeholders, managing different values, the role of the evaluator, ethics etc, and practical advice for how to gather and manage data and information, and analyse and utilize the findings. I’m actually using it as the main text for a Master’s paper, but I reckon it is so usable that I will be referring to it for a long time after I have finished studying. All in all a very useful and useable book for anyone working in programme planning and evaluation! Wendy Barry. WWF.