Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: There has been a steadily growing political focus on the quality of aid that is provided by development agencies. Most of these agencies have invested a lot of resources and strength in making sure they improve the quality of aid by basing programmes on evidence of what works, increasing the level of evaluation, strengthening evaluation rigor and using robust and reliable monitoring of progress and performance. Despite all these efforts to improve programs that support basic services, there is lack of a sound scientific approach in measuring the level of evidence used in development projects.
Objectives: To develop and evaluate a tool to facilitate evidence use in development projects.
Methods: We designed a tool, which we used to evaluate two of our project proposals: 'Solar energy for improving respiratory health' and the WEUSTINK-LEERDAM TVET fellowship program, to see how we had planned to use evidence-based approaches and, more importantly, make recommendations to include appropriate use of evidence in project implementation. We used the tool retrospectively to measure our use of evidence over time while highlighting the surrounding activities in a quest to bring out influencing factors for the use of evidence in our projects
Results: We developed a tool (Evidence Barometer) for evaluating the use of evidence in project implementation. We identified 10 evidenced-based criteria, which we used in developing the tool, with each criterion having different scores assigned. We observed a steady increase in our use of evidence in our projects over a seven-year period. Our proposals obtained very low scores of 9 and 11 points respectively out of a possible 26 points. We recommended evidence-informed changes in nine domains from results obtained from the Evidence Barometer.
Conclusions: This tool will be useful for development agencies to know with certainty that their projects are evidence-based. However, the tool is best used a priori, because it is able to highlight weak evidence links and make recommendations for improvements. Using the tool at the end of a project will highlight the evidence gaps, but not allow them to be fixed. This tool will boost use of evidence in global health and sustainable development goals.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: Yes, in 4/10 domains.
Objectives: To develop and evaluate a tool to facilitate evidence use in development projects.
Methods: We designed a tool, which we used to evaluate two of our project proposals: 'Solar energy for improving respiratory health' and the WEUSTINK-LEERDAM TVET fellowship program, to see how we had planned to use evidence-based approaches and, more importantly, make recommendations to include appropriate use of evidence in project implementation. We used the tool retrospectively to measure our use of evidence over time while highlighting the surrounding activities in a quest to bring out influencing factors for the use of evidence in our projects
Results: We developed a tool (Evidence Barometer) for evaluating the use of evidence in project implementation. We identified 10 evidenced-based criteria, which we used in developing the tool, with each criterion having different scores assigned. We observed a steady increase in our use of evidence in our projects over a seven-year period. Our proposals obtained very low scores of 9 and 11 points respectively out of a possible 26 points. We recommended evidence-informed changes in nine domains from results obtained from the Evidence Barometer.
Conclusions: This tool will be useful for development agencies to know with certainty that their projects are evidence-based. However, the tool is best used a priori, because it is able to highlight weak evidence links and make recommendations for improvements. Using the tool at the end of a project will highlight the evidence gaps, but not allow them to be fixed. This tool will boost use of evidence in global health and sustainable development goals.
Patient or healthcare consumer involvement: Yes, in 4/10 domains.