Since I started looking at the role of ICTs in monitoring and evaluation a few years back, one concern that has consistently come up is: “Are we getting too focused on quantitative M&E because ICTs are more suited to gather quantitative data? Are we forgetting the importance of qualitative data and information? How can we use ICTs for qualitative M&E?”
So it’s great to see that Insight Share (in collaboration with UNICEF) has just put out a new guide for facilitators on using Participatory Video (PV) and the Most Significant Change (MSC) methodologies together.
The Most Significant Change methodology is a qualitative method developed (and documented in a guide in 2005) by Rick Davies and Jess Dart (described below):
Participatory Video methodologies have also been around for quite a while, and they are nicely laid out in Insight Share’s Participatory Video Handbook, which I’ve relied on in the past to guide youth participatory video work. With mobile video becoming more and more common, and editing tools getting increasingly simple, it’s now easier to integrate video into community processes than it has been in the past.
The new toolkit combines these two methods and provides guidance for evaluators, development workers, facilitators, participatory video practitioners, M&E staff and others who are interested in learning how to use participatory video as a tool for qualitative evaluation via MSC. The toolkit takes users through a nicely designed, step-by-step process to planning, implementing, interpreting and sharing results.
I highly recommend taking a quick look at the toolkit to see if it might be a useful method of qualitative M&E — enhanced and livened up a bit with video!
Wait... What? 