The ESSENCE on Health Research initiative of funders has published a new good practice document: Six Practices to Strengthen Evaluation of Global Health Research for Development. It is the result of 25 funding organizations coming together to agree on best practices and to advocate for them.
At a May conference of the Southern Africa Research and Innovation Management Association (SARIMA) in South Africa, ESSENCE members finalized the document through panel discussions. SARIMA is one of a few associations that focuses on research management, including evaluation of research (not just health). SARIMA worked with ESSENCE to set up consultations with southern African researchers, research managers and administrators during its development. Each ESSENCE document is always developed in concert with programmes that are affected by and can benefit from the recommended standards.
“These good practices are perfectly suited for emerging research councils in Africa,” said Dorothy Ngila, Project Specialist at the National Research Foundation of South Africa. “This report provides a tool to bring global coherence to research impact evaluation.”
Yogi Naik from the National University of Science and Technology of Zimbabwe, said, “As a manager in a research and innovation institution in southern Africa, I welcome a document that provides useful cases and examples from various settings and fields. These help us develop our own systems of research evaluation.”
The report recommends the following six best practices to consider for research evaluation:
- Build on established evaluation standards.
- Develop rigorous design, approaches, methods and metrics.
- Consider values.
- Identify users and intended uses of the evaluation.
- Plan according to the anticipated timeline of influence.
- Foster collaboration among diverse stakeholders.
ESSENCE is an initiative of funding agencies to improve the coordination and harmonization of research capacity investments. It is hosted at TDR. This report is the fourth document in the series of good practice documents and was led by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC).
Cameron Bess, a Senior Research Adviser at the US Global Development Lab at USAID, said, “As a member of ESSENCE initiative, USAID is particularly pleased to see that the joint effort and learning between the funding agencies resulted in a useful tool that helps all of us engaged in research for development.”
For more information, contact Dr Garry Aslanyan, Manager, Partnerships and Governance.