Guidance note for Inception Reports - UN Women

Stakeholders: The inception report explains what has been done to initiate the evaluation and the plan
for action. In addition, it explains the agreed expectations among the different stakeholders and process
of the evaluation and is a guide to each stakeholder’s specific roles.
What are the guiding principles?
The inception report should comply with United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Norms and
Standards. 2 It should be coherent with the UN Women evaluation policy and strategy, and UN Women’s
Result Based Management principles should guide the development of inception report.
Since Human Rights (HR) and Gender Equality (GE) are central to the UN’s mandate and all of its work,
these elements also need to be included in evaluations. The key guiding principles in integrating HR and
GE in evaluation are: (1) Inclusion; (2) Participation; (3) Fair power relations; and (4) Mixed methods. 3
What should the inception report include?
The inception report should include 4 :
1. Introduction
Describe the programme being evaluated, drawing from relevant documentation, particularly
the desk review. 5 State the purpose of the programme clearly.
State the purpose, scope and use of the evaluation. 6 This includes the background of the
programme and a brief explanation of why the organization decided to conduct an evaluation
and how the evaluation results will be used and by whom. Include the complete set of
evaluation questions and elaborate on them as necessary. Make sure that HR and GE aspects
are well incorporated in the evaluation questions. 7 Any questions added during the contract
negotiations must be clearly indicated and any deleted questions must be mentioned with a
reason as to their exclusion.
2 Please see also UNEG Quality Checklist for Evaluation ToR and Inception Report:
http://www.uneval.org/normsandstandards/index.jsp this guidance is from the UNEG. For UN Women purposes,
the document is more helpful for developing a ToR.
3 Please see UNEG Handbook for Integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality Perspectives in Evaluations in the
UN System
4 You may use this section as a checklist for reviewing the quality of the inception report.
5 The desk review includes a collection of all documents on the project, reports, minutes, lectures, schedules and
proposals. The inception report draws on these sources.
6 This is usually set out in the ToR. If any modifications are made during the inception phase, it should be clearly
indicated.
7 Please see UNEG Handbook for Integrating Human Rights and Gender Equality Perspectives in Evaluations in the
UN System. The Handbook has “Framing the valuation question for the analysis”: (1) of design and planning; (2) in
implementation; and (3) of results at the outcome and impact level.
3