Evaluation · Several weeks to months for a full harvest; engagement workshops take 1-3 hours each.

Outcome Harvesting

Outcome Harvesting is an evaluation approach that collects evidence of what has changed, defined as changes in the behaviour, relationships, actions, policies or practices of people and organisations, and then works backwards to assess how an intervention contributed. It suits complex settings where outcomes cannot be planned in advance.

When to use Outcome Harvesting

When outcomes are unpredictable, many actors influence change, and the aim is to learn how change happened rather than to check planned activities.

How Outcome Harvesting works

Use it after or during a programme to find out what participants and their organisations actually do differently. Workshops with participants can serve as the 'engage with informants' step.

Phases of Outcome Harvesting

  1. Design the harvest: With the people who will use the findings, agree the questions the harvest must answer and what information to collect from whom.
  2. Gather data and draft outcome descriptions: Review reports and other documents for evidence of change and draft short outcome statements: who changed what, when, and how the programme contributed.
  3. Engage with informants: Ask the people closest to the change to review, correct and add outcome descriptions.
  4. Substantiate: Check a selection of outcomes with independent, knowledgeable sources to strengthen credibility.
  5. Analyse and interpret: Group and interpret the outcomes to answer the harvest questions, looking for patterns in what changed and why.
  6. Support use of findings: Help the users of the harvest discuss the findings and decide what to do with them.

Key principles

  • Outcomes are observable changes in behaviour or practice
  • Work backwards from change to contribution
  • Involve the people closest to the change
  • Design for the users of the findings

Best for

  • Advocacy, policy and network programmes
  • Capacity-building and leadership programmes
  • Complex or adaptive initiatives
  • Programmes without a fixed plan or theory of change

Considerations

  • Establishes contribution, not attribution; it does not prove a programme caused a change.
  • Relies on documents and recall, so can miss outcomes nobody recorded or remembered.
  • Not designed for use during programme planning.

Attribution & sources

Developed by Ricardo Wilson-Grau and colleagues, 2013

Primary source

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