The quality and ultimate usefulness of an evaluation depend largely on the care taken in the preparation of the mandate and/or the terms of reference.

Assistance by Eureval in the first stages of the evaluation can be particularly valuable in the case of large-scale programmes, complex contractual policies, innovative public interventions or, more generally, when the commissioner of the evaluation is concerned about its utility and/or feasibility.

Our role in this case is to check whether the technical and institutional conditions are met so that essential questions can be asked, reliable answers given, and conclusions taken into account.

The mission can result in one or more evaluation options. It may, exceptionally, conclude with the postponement of the project.

The mission

The mission consists of all or some of the following services. It can be conducted in the form of advice or training.

• Analysis of the intervention to evaluate
  This step consists in defining the scope of the evaluation, describing the activities implemented, identifying the expected effects, and analysing the likelihood of relations of cause and effect.

• Design of the evaluation framework
  In order to draft good terms of references, one should formulate evaluation questions rigorously and precise them thanks to success criteria and useful indicators and data sources. Euréval accompany you to stimulate and formalize all of this reflection.

• Composition of the evaluation committee
  In order to take into account all the legitimate points of view concerned, it is necessary to identify the "clients" of the evaluation and to analyse their information needs, their preferences and their schedules.
  At this stage we make recommendations to officially launch the evaluation with a mandate and to form an evaluation or steering committee.

• Drafting the terms of reference
  The quality of the terms of reference of an evaluation depends essentially on the questions asked. They must be strategic, useful and feasible.
  
  As far as possible, we ask the evaluation committee or the group formed for that purpose to choose and formulate the questions. If necessary, we use group work techniques which stimulate creativity and/or facilitate the grading of priorities.
  
  We also check the methodological feasibility of the evaluation, which involves identifying existing studies, accessible information, relevant indicators and risks likely to appear at the survey stage.
  
  Finally, we propose a realistic schedule, estimate the required budget, define the profile of the evaluation team and suggest options for communicating the results.

• Selection of the evaluation team
  Our contribution may consist in a comparative analysis of proposals received in response to a call for tenders, as well as our participation in interviews with teams.

They trusted us

European Commission – EuropeAid : Design, implementation and dissemination of evaluation techniques and tools adapted to the European Commission’s development aid to third countries. Eureval took part to a joint-venture, called EGEval (withParticip GmbH and ADE), working on a long term mission for the European Commission (EUROPAID) and its development aid and external relation policies. The services involve the development of a corpus of guidelines, methods, instruments and tools that can be used or monitored by the Europaid Evaluation Unit and made available to producers and users of evaluations within the EC administration.

France, Département de l’Hérault :
Elaboration of the terms of reference for the evaluation of the "RMI" (Minimum insertion income) policy. This study included interviews with programme managers, projects managers and beneficiaries, analysis and compilation of existing documents. The aim was to draw up the terms of reference that could be used subsequently to choose external firms to carry out the evaluation itself.