Principle: Monitoring and evaluation resources should be allocated to the optimal combination of monitoring and evaluation activity which maximizes strategic knowledge gain - Different combinations of monitoring and evaluation activity will provide different levels of strategic knowledge gain for an outcome system's community of users; specifying these possible combinations can be done using outcomes theory OIIWA building blocks. Strategic knowledge gain is achieved by answering a community of users' high priority monitoring and evaluation questions.
Discussion: The diagram below shows all of the monitoring and evaluation possibilities for an outcomes system specified in terms of the five OIIWA building blocks. A different OIIWA combination can be used in a pilot/trial phase (if there is one) from that used in the full intervention roll-out.
Principle: Freedom to allocate monitoring and evaluation resources across different types of monitoring and evaluation - Funding or institutional barriers should not be allowed to prevent the optimal allocation of resources to the appropriate OIIWA monitoring and evaluation building block combination.
Discussion: In many cases there are funding and/or institutional barriers which prevent the appropriate allocation of resources to the optimal OIIWA monitoring and evaluation building block combination. For instance, a control organization may mistakenly insist that a whole-intervention high-level outcomes attribution evaluation design (W) be undertaken when it is not feasible, timely or affordable and it would be more useful to answer a set of lower-level formative evaluation questions (A). Answering the formative evaluation questions would provide immediate input into intervention improvements and hence has a higher strategic knowledge value for a community of users.
Principle: There are a limited set of discrete overall monitoring and evaluation models - The limited set of monitoring and evaluation model possibilities are identified in outcomes theory in terms of selecting from the possible OIIWA building blocks that could be used in a pilot/trial (if there is one) and/or full intervention roll-out.
Discussion: Different interventions use different overall monitoring and evaluation approaches (models). In the past, specifying these models has sometimes been difficult and has often been done in the form of an extensive narrative description of the approach being taken at the start of a particular intervention's monitoring and evaluation planning documentation. In some disciplines (e.g. evidence-based medicine), particular overall models are referred to in a shorthand manner by identifying them with a particular type of whole-intervention high-level outcome attribution evaluation design (W); for example, randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, doing this only specifies one part (the pilot/trial) of the overall monitoring and evaluation strategy which needs to include the OIIWA combination used for the full intervention roll-out. Outcomes theory allows for the specification of both pilot/trial and full intervention roll-out aspects of an outcomes system. The diagram above used the OIIWA schemata to set out the full set of OIIWA building block possibilities for both pilot/trial and full program roll-out which can be selected when deciding on the overall monitoring and evaluation model to use for any particular intervention. The diagrams below show examples of the overall monitoring and evaluation models which can be selected for a particular intervention.
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