Evaluation is central to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as it provides the critical evidence to know if the response and recovery efforts are working or not, why, for whom and under what circumstances. Moreover, while the pandemic has widespread implications for the world, it is adversely affecting vulnerable populations such as women and girls and other marginalized communities. Today agile and adaptive evaluations are even more critical to ensure that those left behind continue to receive targeted interventions for full recovery from COVID-19.

To this end, UNFPA Evaluation Office has released a 2-pager, Adapting evaluations to the COVID-19 pandemic: Guiding principles and their practical implications for evaluation. These guiding principles recognize the unique local response to COVID-19 in different countries and encourages evaluation managers to adapt the conduct and management of current and forthcoming evaluation as appropriate to their context. These guiding principles and practical implications will continue to be updated based on real time feedback from the ground.

As a preferred adjustment, UNFPA Evaluation Office encourages the adaptation of the evaluation scope, data collection methods and timeline, while leveraging UN system-wide and joint evaluations to avoid burden on stakeholders already stretched by the COVID-19 response.

For further details, read the paper here

Resources for evaluation managers on evaluation methods and approaches are available here