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86 Introduction This chapter looks at the various monitoring and evaluation designs and tips on how to select the appropriate design for your evaluation. It is of interest that the design you will settle for will culminate from the questions you want to answer. This is to say that the evaluation questions play an important role in the selection of a suitable design to use. One cannot think of a design without readily available questions. In addition, one will also look at the type of evaluation such as impact evaluation, implementation or process evaluation, outcome evaluation, and cost and efficiency (economic) evaluation. Also, time, the data to be collected, and money available, will be the driving force to design selection. However, it should be noted that no one particular design is perfect, each design has its own strengths and weaknesses, and is not restricted to work just in one particular way or answer a particular question or to solely be used alone all the time. Evaluation Design and Performance Questions The evaluation research designs for each type of evaluation vary depending on the evaluation questions, purpose and the type of evaluation, but the right design is the one that is suitable in answering the evaluation questions (Morra-Imas & Rist, 2009). Thus, the evaluation design chosen should be suitable for the type of evaluation questions being posed. For instance, cause-and-effect questions should be answered by an appropriate design. Descriptive and normative questions should also adopt suitable designs. Quantitative study designs (intervention designs: randomised experiments or experimental and quasi-experimental designs, and non-intervention designs: longitudinal designs and cross-sectional designs) might be appropriate for summative evaluations (outcome or impact evaluations). This is because it is easy to generalise quantitative research findings to the other populations based on quantitative data. More so, it is possible to replicate the programme (Rossi, Lipsey & Freeman, 2004). These types of evaluations are concerned with cause-and-effect relationship questions as they aim to establish if the change in condition or circumstances was caused by the intervention or programme, and not by any other factors or explanations. Qualitative research designs (case study designs) may be used for formative evaluations (process or implementation evaluations). This is because qualitative evaluation designs are beneficial as they can provide in-depth programme feedback as the process or implementation evaluation is concerned with establishing whether the programme is implemented as intended or not. However, it would also be appropriate to employ the mixed methods evaluation designs (Marlow, 2011).

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