Report types

ALNAP has developed a system to differentiate between the types of evaluative reports of humanitarian action currently held on the ERD, in order to reflect their different objectives and functions.

Audit: An assessment of the degree to which an organisation or its output conformed to stated objectives and/or international norms.

Conference, workshop or seminar: Conference/workshop/seminar reports reviewing humanitarian action. If a document is a report of conference proceedings, enter name of conference, place, dates, hosts.

Evaluation: A systematic and impartial examination of humanitarian action intended to draw lessons to improve policy and practice and enhance accountability. It has the following characteristics:

  • It is commissioned by or in cooperation with the organisation(s) whose performance is being evaluated.
  • It is undertaken either by a team of non-employees (external) or by a mixed team of non-employees (external) and employees (internal) from the commissioning organisation and/or the organisation being evaluated.
  • It assesses policy and/or practice against recognised criteria: efficiency, effectiveness/timeliness/coordination, impact, connectedness, relevance/ appropriateness, coverage, coherence and, as appropriate, protection.
  • It articulates findings, draws conclusions and makes recommendations.

Follow-up study: A study following up the implementation of an evaluative study's recommendations.

Good practice study: A study intended to establish what constitutes good practice (sometimes referred to as best practice) in the provision of humanitarian assistance.

Joint evaluation: An evaluation to which different donor agencies and/or partners participate. Note: There are various degrees of 'jointness' depending on the extent to which individual partners cooperate in the evaluation process, merge their evaluation resources and combine their evaluation reporting. Joint evaluations can help to overcome attribution problems in assessing the effectiveness of programmes and strategies, the complementarity of efforts supported by different partners, the quality of aid coordination, etc. [Source: OECD-DAC]

Lessons study: A study initiated by an organisation with the explicit objective of identifying lessons within that organisation, but falling outside the full evaluation definition. A process that may be facilitated by external consultants but is generally internal.

Real-time evaluation: An evaluation that is carried out while a programme is in full implementation, and that simultaneously feeds back its findings to the programme for immediate use.

Review: An assessment (internal or external) of humanitarian action falling outside the full evaluation definition. Included in this category would be internal reviews, impact assessments, mid-term reviews, monitoring activities, policy reviews and operational research.

Summary: The summarised version of an evaluation or review, prepared by either the report authors or the commisioning agency, for dissemination in parallel with or instead of the full report.

Synthesis report: An analysis of a series of evaluations to form an overall picture and assessment of the projects, programmes, policies or organisations that have been evaluated.

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