RESOURCE CENTRE MANUAL
HEALTHLINK WORLDWIDE
9.1 Why monitor and evaluate?
Monitoring means keeping records of different resource centre activities.
Evaluation means using these records and other information, such as user
surveys and focus group discussions, to review performance at set intervals and
identify ways to improve the resource centre and its services.
Evaluating resource centre activities enables the parent organisation or donors
to know how useful the activities are. Donors usually expect to receive an
evaluation report at set intervals, such as every three years or at the end of a
project or programme phase. Parent organisations should also receive
evaluation results, to demonstrate how well the resource centre is helping the
organisation to fulfil its mission.
Evaluations can vary greatly in scale and style. An evaluation might cover the
whole range of resource centre activities, or it might focus on an individual
activity, such as the enquiry service. The evaluation process – analysing data,
drawing conclusions and making recommendations – might take more than a
week or it might take less than a day.
Collecting and analysing data might involve an outside evaluator, such as a
representative of a donor agency, and/or the evaluation might be a
‘participatory evaluation’ involving resource centre staff and users.
Participatory evaluation provides an excellent opportunity for staff to learn
from their experiences and contribute to the continuing development of the
resource centre.
Evaluation requires a combination of ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ data:
• Quantitative data is data that can be measured, such as the number of
visitors, the number of written and telephone enquiries, the number of
searches carried out by staff, the number of subjects requested, or the
number of sources used to provide information requested. Quantitative data
is collected through monitoring (see Section 9.2).
• Qualitative data is data that cannot be measured, such as users’ opinions
about the resource centre, and how they have used information obtained
from the resource centre. Qualitative data is collected through
questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions (see Section 9.3).
2 SECTION 9: MONITORING AND EVALUATION