Participatory Impact Assessment - Capacity4Dev

one might expect households to spend more of their income on livestock assets, as they re-stock
after suffering livestock losses due to death or stress sales. Therefore tracking changes in food,
income and expenditure can often be a useful way of measuring impact against community
indicators of impact and against coping strategies. Many livelihoods projects also have food
security, income generating, or livelihoods diversification objectives and again food, income and
expenditure changes can be a useful way to measure change against these objectives.
It needs to be emphasized that an understanding of the context is essential to deriving meaning
from these indicators, as livelihoods and coping strategies will vary depending on the kind of crisis
being experienced. They will also change over time and between different communities. Simply
measuring changes in livelihoods impact indicators will not tell you much about impact unless you
understand the reasons behind those changes. An understanding of livelihoods and context is
therefore an important part of any impact assessment.
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