SAGA Progress Report - 2004 - Monitoring and Evaluation

SAGA
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saga@cornell.edu

SAGA PROGRESS REPORT (12/03-12/04) &
UPCOMING WORKPLAN (1/05-12/05)

V. MONITORING AND EVALUATION

Our monitoring and evaluation efforts focus on a set of yearly quantitative indicators, such as publications, workshops and, and small grants issued. Progress along these dimensions is found at http://www.saga.cornell.edu/saga/annreport/annrep.html. In addition, we developed with USAID/Washington a series of instruments and conducted a survey of users and clients, distinguishing among four groups: USAID Missions, African research collaborators, stakeholders, conference and workshop participants, and recipients of grant awards. Details of the results are found at our website. However, our client surveys suggest broad satisfaction for each group of participants, along each dimension of the SAGA program. Some highlights include:

Of the respondents from USAID Missions involved in SAGA to 15 questions about the consistency of SAGA research and responsiveness to the Mission requests, 49.2% of the responses strongly agreed (most positive possible response on 1 to 5 basis), and 39.0% of the responses agreed (second most positive response on 1 to 5 basis).
Of the responses by research partners to 12 questions about their interest in SAGA, the relevance of the research both to policy and strengthening their institution’s capacity, 70.8% of their responses indicate that they strongly agree that SAGA is achieving these objectives, 25.0% of their responses show that they agree and 4.2% of their answers are that they neither agree or disagree (the middle response on a 1 to 5 basis).
Among workshops participants who responded to the questions on a 1 to 5 scale about the organization, content and impact of the SAGA workshops, (where 5 is strongly agree, 4 is agree, 3 is neither agree nor disagree, etc.), 29.8% report 5s, 46.0%, 4s, 12.5%,3s, 4.9%, 2s, and 0.5%, 1s. An additional 6.3% of the answers were either not known or considered not applicable by the respondents.
Responses by stakeholders to questions about their knowledge of SAGA, the relevance of the research questions, and the impact of the research indicate that the vast majority answer that they strongly agree or agree that SAGA is effective along these dimensions. For example, all respondents state that they strong agree that they hope to have more contact and interaction with SAGA, and 67% state that they strongly believe that SAGA is “an example of the type of useful technical assistance and training that USAID should be encouraged to support,” with the other 33% stating that they agree with this statement.

Next Steps

During the next year we will continue our quantitative monitoring of output and activities, including:

Number of publications
Number of workshops and conferences
Number of visits by SAGA researchers and small grants coordinator to collaborate with African colleagues and vice versa
Number of hits on SAGA websites
Number of research proposals reviewed
Number of small-grants issues
Number of workshops/conferences and presentations by SAGA

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