Overview of Impact Evaluation

Impact evaluations provide information about the impacts produced by an intervention. Impact
evaluation can be undertaken of a programme or a policy, or upstream work – such as capacity
building, policy advocacy and support for an enabling environment. This goes beyond looking only at
goals and objectives to also examine unintended impacts. OEDC-DAC defines impacts as “positive
and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced by a development intervention,
directly or indirectly, intended or unintended.”1
An impact evaluation can be undertaken for formative purposes (to improve or reorient a programme
or policy) or for summative purposes (to inform decisions about whether to continue, discontinue,
replicate or scale up a programme or policy). It can be used by UNICEF and its partners at the global,
regional or country level to inform decisions and for advocacy and advice.
This brief provides an overview of the different elements of impact evaluation and the different options
for UNICEF programme managers for each of these elements, in terms of stages involved in planning
and managing an impact evaluation.