Meta-evaluation on the Quality of (Project) Evaluations in the German Development Cooperation

Evaluations by official implementing organisations and non-governmental organisations (e.g. churches, political foundations, non-governmental organisations and agencies involved in social structure assistance) are of high relevance in German development cooperation. These evaluations yield conclusions and recommendations for the implemented projects, which can result in improved work (or improved DC) in the future. In many organisations, the application of the evaluations follow internationally recognised evaluation standards such as those of the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD-DAC) or of DeGEval – Evaluation Society (Gesellschaft für Evaluation e. V.). The aim of the meta-evaluation was to examine the quality of the evaluations both for the overlap between the OECD-DAC and DeGEval standards and for organisation-specific standards.

The objective of the meta-evaluation was to carry out an independent evaluation of the quality of evaluations by different governmental and non-governmental organisations working in the field of German development cooperation. This is expected to make an important contribution to both accountability and learning, thus enabling the quality of evaluations to be improved. As part of the latter aspect, an overview of the quality standards considered for the evaluations was compiled and factors influencing the quality of the evaluations were identified.