Evaluation of nutrition interventions. An annotated bibliography and review of methodologies and results. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
1. This is the second edition of an annotated bibliography covering evaluation methodology and evaluations of nutrition interventions. It contains more than 110 items on methodology and around 300 reports describing the results from evaluation studies. Included are most of the 250 items listed in the first edition, which was compiled in 1980, by G.P. Sevenhuysen and Ann Burgess. Almost all the items are available in the FAO libraries in Rome. 2. The most useful of the items are starred and also indexed in Tables 1, 2 or 3. Evaluation methodology 3. There was general agreement in the guidelines on evaluation methodology on the following points: Evaluation should be an integral routine programme activity wherever possible; Field staff must be involved at all stages of the evaluation including interpretation; Results should be rapidly 'fed-back' to allow adaptations to be made to the programme if necessary. 4. Many of the guidelines did not adequately cover the following points: How to conduct both 'operational' and 'impact' evaluation; The importance of taking into account, when designing the evaluation, the needs of the people who will use the results; How to select a representative sample; How to overcome the problem of 'drop-outs'; How to measure 'leakage' of programme inputs; How to control for non-programme variables; How to distinguish among the effects of multiple inputs; How to measure costs and cost-effectiveness; How to ensure data reliability. A review of reports of evaluation studies confirmed that better guidelines are needed in these areas. Evaluation reports 5. In only about one third of the studies examined were sufficient details available for a good assessment to be made of the reliability of the results. 6. Among the problems that made it difficult to assess the value of some of the results were: A lack of specific programme objectives and of baseline data; Inadequate statistical testing of the results; Conclusions based mainly on subjective opinion rather than objective information; A weak data base, due to an unrepresentative sample, a high 'drop-out' rate among the selected sample, or insufficient data collected; A lack of information on the 'dosage' of the input actually reaching the recipients; A lack of information on possible differences in age distribution, and other variables, in the test and control groups; No control of non-programme variables; An evaluation design that did not allow the different contributions of multiple programme inputs to be assessed; No data on costs; Lack of information on which to judge data reliability.
D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008722:Methods; D052756:Nutritional Sciences / Q000193:education; D014480:United Nations