Outcomes and Impact: Evaluating Change in Social DevelopmentBy Peter Oakley, Brian Pratt and Andrew ClaytonHow can development agencies evaluate the long term impact of theirsocial development programmes? What types of methods do they need toemploy? How effective are formal planning, monitoring and evaluationsystems at understanding social change? Building on the experiences ofmany different agencies, this book provides a comprehensive discussionof the difficulties, dilemmas and opportunities of understanding theoutcomes and impact of social development programmes and projects.The book shows that while there are no easy solutions for evaluatingimpact, a range of methods and approaches can be employed in order toprovide an adequate understanding of social change. Case studies arepresented of NGOs which have succeeded in evaluating these complexsocial processes, within the constraints imposed by resources, staff skills, existing monitoring and evaluation requirements and external pressures.The book illustrates genuine, innovative attempts to bring the rhetoric ofevaluating impact into the reality of on-going development programmes. Itprovides invaluable lessons for development practitioners and researchersseeking to establish more effective methods for understanding theoutcomes and impact of development interventions. Peter Oakley was a Research Fellow at the Centre for DevelopmentStudies, University College, Swansea.Brian Pratt is Executive Director of INTRAC.Andrew Clayton was a Researcher at INTRAC.Cover picture: Community members in Rehoboth, Namibia assess howHIV/AIDS affects them through a series of peer group discussions, followed by a community meeting where results are shared with the largercommunity as a way to help fight the HIV epidemic in Nambia. In thisphoto, women explain to the community the changes that have takenplace in Block E, Rehoboth, according to their peer group, older women.