Current approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) in health and social development are often expensive and are conducted in order to demonstrate success, rather than to learn how change occurs and what works within a particular context. Responding to these concerns, this book will illustrate the potential of interpretative methods to aid understanding and make a difference on the ground. Through a focus on individual and community perspectives, and locally-grounded explanations, the ethnographically-informed methods explored in this book offer a potentially richer way of assessing the relationships between intent, action and change in health and social development.

1. Interpretive and Ethnographic Perspectives - Alternative Approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation Practice Part 1: The Present Challenge 2. The Political Economy of Evidence: Personal Reflections on the Value of the Interpretive Tradition and its Methods 3. Measurement, Modification and Transferability: Evidential Challenges in the Evaluation of Complex Interventions 4. What Really Works? Understanding the Role of 'Local Knowledges' in the Monitoring and Evaluation of a Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Project in Kenya PART 2: Programme Design 5. Permissions, Vacations and Periods of Self-regulation: Using Consumer Insight to Improve HIV Treatment Adherence in Four Central American Countries 6. Generating Local Knowledge: A Role for Ethnography in Evidence-based Programme Design for Social Development 7. Interpretation, Context and Time: An Ethnographically Inspired Approach to Strategy Development for Tuberculosis Control in Odisha, India 8. Designing Health and Leadership Programmes for Young Vulnerable Women Using Participatory Ethnographic Research in Freetown, Sierra Leone Part 3: Monitoring Processes 9. Using Social Mapping Techniques to Guide Programme Redesign in the Tingim Laip HIV Prevention and Care Project in Papua New Guinea 10. Pathways to Impact: New Approaches to Monitoring and Improving Volunteering for Sustainable Environmental Management 11. Ethnographic Process Evaluation: A Case Study of an HIV Prevention Programme with Injecting Drug Users in the USA 12. Using the Reality Check Approach to Shape Quantitative Findings: Experience from Mixed Method Evaluations in Ghana and Nepal Part 4: Understanding Impact and Change 13. Innovation in Evaluation: Using SenseMaker to Assess the Inclusion of Smallholder Farmers in Modern Markets 14. The Use of the Rapid PEER Approach for the Evaluation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Programmes 15. Using Interpretive Research to Make Quantitative Evaluation More Effective: Oxfam's Experience in Pakistan and Zimbabwe 16. Can Qualitative Research Rigorously Evaluate Programme Impact? Evidence from a Randomised Controlled Trial of an Adolescent Sexual Health Programme in Tanzania