Description:
This training course aims to enhance participants’ understanding of how to commission, manage and monitor evaluations. It will increase your ability to design, manage and monitor the evaluations – funded with or without EU funds – conducted by your organisation.

The main aim is not to train participants as expert practitioners, but to put them in a position where they are confident to commission and manage evaluations, understand the basics of certain tools and approaches, and are able to consider the advantages and disadvantages that justify the use of some above others. Consequently, they will be able to design briefs for (internal or external) evaluators, interact with them competently and assess the quality of their work.

In particular, the seminar should help participants understand the two most prominent approaches to evaluation today: counterfactual (also known as experimental or quasi-experimental) approaches, and theory-based approaches. The seminar will demonstrate in practical terms what counterfactual approaches can and cannot do and the conditions in which they can be used. It will also show how theory-based approaches can provide a good alternative when such conditions are not met and discuss ways in which the two approaches can be combined.

This two-day seminar is aimed at public officials from EU Member States, candidate countries, EU institutions and Agencies, Managing Authorities, auditors, consultants, staff of NGOs, and other stakeholders involved in the management of evaluation procedures for policies, programmes and projects. The seminar is aimed at those working with or without European Funds.