Позитивные изменения, Том 3 №1, 2023. Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 1 (2023)

• If it is not clear who and how will use the answers to any of the suggested questions, exclude these questions from the scope.

• Include only those questions where answers are not known or at least not obvious to you.

• See if there is a simpler way to answer these questions, rather than performing a self-evaluation.

• Try to keep the number of questions to a minimum. Leave only those of most importance to you.

• At the end of self-evaluation, hold a meeting to discuss the results and plan actions required to use those results (with timelines and responsibilities).

• Think about whether some of the results of your self-evaluation can be useful to someone else besides you.

Principle 2. Competence of the performers.

NGO employees who conduct self-evaluation must have the necessary and sufficient knowledge and skills to do so.

Recommendations:

• Self-evaluation is carried out according to certain rules. You don’t have to become an expert evaluator, but you do need to know the basics. To do this, you can read special literature or send some of your employees to a training.

• Keep in mind that it is always possible to consult with experts in areas where your own knowledge and skills are lacking. For example, your local university or professional evaluators association.

• Consider self-evaluation an opportunity to learn through practice. Discuss the experience and learn from it.

Principle 3. Appropriate methodology.

The choice of the general approach to self-evaluation and the methods of conducting it should be well justified, considering the limitations. Various evaluation methods must be used, following appropriate procedures and standards.

Recommendations:

• When planning self-evaluation, consider the limitations of available resources and time. Remember that you do not have all the necessary knowledge and skills for evaluation.

• It is important to have an understanding of the strengths and limitations of different approaches to project and program evaluation.

• When choosing self-evaluation methods and tools, it is better to do simple things right than to do complicated things wrong.

• If you have any doubts about the capabilities or appropriateness of a particular tool, you should consult with an expert or refrain from using that tool.

• Remember that the familiarity and prevalence of techniques do not guarantee that they will be appropriate for self-evaluation of a particular project in a given setting.

• Everyone can make mistakes, and it is important to learn from them and avoid their repeating.

Principle 4. Transparency.

Self-evaluation is a transparent process: all parties involved must be informed about the goals, methodology and intended use of its results.

Recommendations:

• Make sure that everyone involved in self-evaluation has sufficient information about the process and agrees to provide data voluntarily (respecting the principle of “informed consent”).

• Full results of the self-evaluation are only intended for you. For everyone else, they can either be partially open (at your discretion) or completely closed.

• You need to consider that you may have a bias towards your own project and be suffering from having lost the fresh perception of the project (“blurred view”): these issues should be openly discussed by the self-evaluation participants.

• Since you are performing the self-evaluation for yourself, not for someone else, you are interested in seeing your project for what it is. In this situation, embellishing simply makes no sense. Therefore, you should not view the self-evaluation situation as a potential conflict of interest or be concerned about it.

Principle 5. Safety.