March 25,2021
SUMMARY
Measuring Coherence of Complex Interventions
This session focused on one of the most challenging aspects of evaluations, measuring the coherence of interventions. Coherence is both difficult to conceptualize and operationalize. The DAC Evaluation Criteria promoted by the influential Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has helped guide evaluations in the development sector as well as a range of other evaluations for three decades. The new evaluation criterion that has been added is coherence. Coherence can be defined as “how well does the intervention fit” within any given setting. Too often, evaluation studies are too focused on the impacts of specific interventions after “controlling” for context and other external factors. In our experience, coherence is rarely ever explored or measured, either at the planning or implementation stages. Programs and policies can fail because of a lack of such a fit. This webinar focused on measuring coherence, both at the programmatic and the policy levels.
The exciting slate of speakers included:
Fred Carden, the former Director of Evaluation at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Canada and presently the founder of Using Evidence Inc. in Ottawa.
Lori Bell, Head of Evaluation at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Elliot Stern is Editor of the journal Evaluation and an Emeritus Professor of Evaluation Research at Lancaster University.
Vijayalakshmi Vadivelu is a Senior Evaluation Advisor at the Independent Evaluation Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
PRESENTATIONS
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Open in new tab COMMENTS & SYNTHESIS
For each of the webinars, we synthesized the exchange of comments from the webinar chat and summarised the learnings from the presentations.
- Insights from webinar three “Measuring Coherence of Complex Interventions”
TECCHI’s third webinar in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) series was centered on the role that evaluations could play in measuring the coherence of interventions. Coherence can be defined as “how well an intervention fits” within a given setting. As a recent graduate, I’ve been surrounded by many classmates who are interested in the notions of… Read more: Insights from webinar three “Measuring Coherence of Complex Interventions” - Summary of Presentations | Measuring Coherence of Complex InterventionsFred Carden Coherence: A Principles-Focused Approach What is Coherence? OECD 1991 – initial focus on policy coherence European Commission 1992 – put into law Focus has been on global issues Enshrined in SDGs No accepted definition OECD defines coherence as: an approach and policy tool to systematically integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions of… Read more: Summary of Presentations | Measuring Coherence of Complex Interventions
