aes26 International Evaluation Conference

Author: Adrian Field, Dovetail Consulting
Value for Investment (VfI) is an emerging evaluation system that is gaining increasing traction internationally. The system is intentionally mixed methods, interdisciplinary and collaborative.
It is this collaborative positioning of VfI that this presentation is focused. In VfI framing, value draws from multiple perspectives of what makes a programme, intervention or policy valuable. Therefore, understanding and capturing value requires a fundamentally collaborative mindset, one that reaches beyond existing data sources and reporting, to explore from many different perspectives what it is that fundamentally matters about the intervention that is the evaluation’s focus.

This presentation draws on learning and approaches in exploring value through participatory design techniques. It will draw on approaches developed and refined across a range of VfI evaluations, in the health, mental health, justice, urban development, transport and creative sectors.
The session will describe a range of facilitative techniques adopted to draw on different stakeholders perspectives on value, and the strengths that they offer for building robust, relevant and actionable evaluations.

Using a VfI lens allied with participatory design techniques, the presentation will explore how value can be brought to life across key evaluation questions, theories of change and value propositions, evaluative rubrics, and collaborative sense-making.

Session participants will gain a clear sense of the possibilities and potential for applying participatory approaches in VfI, and the strengths these offer for evaluation practice.