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Tensions, challenges and issues in evaluating communication for development: findings from recent research and strategies for sustainable outcomes

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posted on 2017-01-05, 14:02 authored by June Lennie, Jo TacchiJo Tacchi
The complexity of development and social change and growing tensions between dominant results-based and emerging learning and improvement-based approaches to evaluating development interventions have created major challenges for the evaluation of communication for development (C4D). Drawing on our recent research, we identify significant tensions, challenges and issues in evaluating C4D. They include contextual and institutional challenges, problems with attribution and unrealistic timeframes, a lack of capacities in both evaluation and C4D, and a lack of appreciation, funding and support for approaches that are more appropriate for the evaluation of C4D. We propose various strategies that can help to address these challenges and issues, including using a rigorous mixed methods approach, and implementing long-term, holistic evaluation capacity development at all levels and our new framework for evaluating C4D. These and other strategies can help to create a supportive environment in which new ideas and approaches can flourish, more sustainable outcomes of C4D can be achieved, and C4D organisations can become more sustainable and effective. The implications for C4D policy are considered.

History

School

  • Loughborough University London

Published in

Nordicom Review

Volume

36

Pages

25 - 39

Citation

LENNIE, J. and TACCHI, J., 2015. Tensions, challenges and issues in evaluating communication for development: findings from recent research and strategies for sustainable outcomes. Nordicom Review, 36, pp. 25-39.

Publisher

Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (Nordicom)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Nordicom Review and is available at http://www.nordicom.gu.se/en/publikationer/nordicom-review.

ISBN

9789187957079

ISSN

1403-1108

Language

  • en

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