Our Approach

At IDEAS we tailor our approach to ensure that our services provide timely, meaningful insights and actionable recommendations for our customers and their stakeholders.

Needs Assessment and Goal Setting

We begin every project design and evaluation with a thorough needs assessment, collaborating closely with our clients and their partners to understand their specific goals, expectations, and desired outcomes. By aligning our approach with these objectives, we ensure that our advice is focused and targeted.

Ethical and Professional Standards

Maintaining the highest ethical and professional standards is at the core of our approach. We adhere to the principles of confidentiality, impartiality, and respect for the rights and dignity of those involved in the evaluation.

Project Design and Evaluation

Based on the needs assessment, we create an inception report outlining the evaluation’s purpose and scope, and propose an approach for carrying out the assessment, including the data collection, analysis, and synthesis methodologies with accompanying timelines.

Data Collection and Analysis

We employ rigorous data collection techniques to ensure the reliability and validity of our findings. The evaluation uses an evidence-based approach with robust analytical underpinning that forms the basis for crystallizing findings, which, in turn, provides lessons learned and recommendations for operational improvement and organisational learning. By triangulating multiple sources of data, we strive to provide a comprehensive understanding of the evaluated program or initiative.

Stakeholder Engagement

We strongly believe in the importance of adopting a participatory approach engaging stakeholders throughout the process to receive their input. Our collaborative approach fosters ownership, enhances the credibility, and promotes the utilization of evaluation findings.

Ongoing Support and Capacity Building

We view evaluation as a continuous learning process. In addition to providing evaluation services, we offer ongoing support to our clients, including capacity-building workshops, training sessions, and guidance on monitoring and evaluation practices. We are able to build our clients' evaluation capacity, enabling them to stay abreast on evaluation methodologies and innovation.

Actionable Recommendations

Our evaluations are not just about generating reports; they are about making a real impact. We prioritize the delivery of actionable recommendations that address the identified strengths, challenges, and areas for improvement. Our recommendations are practical, evidence-based, and tailored.

Utilization-Focused Evaluation

We embrace the principles of Utilization-Focused Evaluation, which emphasize that evaluations should be judged based on their utility and actual use. Our evaluators are skilled at facilitating the evaluation process and designing evaluations with careful consideration of how every aspect will affect their use. We are continuously examining and adapting to how real people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experience the evaluation process.