Evaluation Series | DAC Evaluation Quality Standards
Introduction
The DAC Evaluation Quality Standards identify the key pillars needed for a quality evaluation process and product. They have been prepared by DAC members in order to define member countries’ expectations of evaluation processes, and evaluation products. The Standards are not binding on member countries, but a guide to good practice and aim to improve the quality of development intervention evaluations. They are intended to contribute to a harmonised approach to evaluation in line with the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
The Standards are intended to:
- provide standards for the process (conduct) and products (outputs) of evaluations;
- facilitate the comparison of evaluations across countries (meta-evaluation);
- facilitate partnerships and collaboration on joint evaluations;
- better enable member countries to make use of each others’ evaluation findings and
- reports (including good practice and lessons learned); and
- streamline evaluation efforts.
The Standards support evaluations that adhere to the principles of evaluation in the DAC Principles for the Evaluation of Development Assistance, including impartiality and independence, credibility and usefulness, and should be read in conjunction with those principles. The Principles focus on the management and institutional set up of the evaluation systems within development agencies and remain the benchmark against which OECD Members are assessed in the DAC Peer Reviews. By contrast the Standards provide guidance on the conduct of evaluations and for reports. While the Standards are not binding on every evaluation, they should be applied as widely as possible and a brief explanation provided where this was not possible.
The term ‘development intervention’ is used in the Standards as a general term to refer to the subject of the evaluation and may refer to an activity, project, programme, strategy, policy, topic, sector, operational area, institutional performance etc.
The Standards recognise that the product of an evaluation may be in a variety of different forms, including oral or written reports, presentation and community workshops. The term ‘evaluation report’ is used to cover all forms of evaluation products.