Guidelines for Impact Monitoring & Assessment in Microfinance ...

IMPACT MONITORING & ASSESSMENT IN MICROFINANCE PROGRAMMES
design an optimal methodological mix?” Thus, our goal is to create knowledge
on the basis of triangulation rather than to use a methodological blueprint.
We distinguish four main categories of methodological approach in impact measurement:
scientific, qualitative, participatory learning and action (PLA), and management-oriented,
with emphasis on the latter. There is no inherent incompatibility
between these approaches – each brings something valuable to the IM agenda - so
we can take from each of the four categories as needed. Practitioner-oriented IM
and IA focus on the points outlined below.
Management-oriented systems models:
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• emphasize comprehensiveness in evaluation, placing evaluation within a larger
framework of organizational activities
• include aspects of the models below
Scientific experimental models:
• plausibly explain causality of impact in relation to programme intervention
• How can external factors that influence development policies and
goals, as well as project interventions be controlled?
• How can a control group be devised to ascertain what would have happened
without programme intervention?
Qualitative/anthropological models:
• demonstrate the importance of observation, the need to retain the phenomenological
quality of the evaluation context, and the value of subjective human
interpretation in the evaluation process (naturalistic or fourth-generation
evaluation)
Participant-oriented models:
• encourage a two-way learning process by allowing the target population to
determine their own indicators and development goals
In practitioner-oriented impact measurement, problems are complex, so methodologies
should be varied. Thus, it is desirable to consider the different methods and
inherent paradigms as a continuum with two poles: one quantitative and one qualitative;
and to consider this polarization as an attempt to guide your thinking about
aspects that might otherwise be left out.