The quality of your evaluation will depend on the quality of the data you have to hand, and this means that your monitoring – the way you systematically collect and record information that can be used as part of an evaluation – is absolutely key.
Developing a sensible, robust evaluation framework will help to make sure that your monitoring collects everything you need for your evaluation and nothing more. In turn this avoids gaps, unhelpful duplication, and needless frustration further down the line.
Understanding exactly what information you need allows you to build a practical plan for data collection, including deciding how and when to go about gathering data and who should be responsible for collecting it.
Read about how to develop a monitoring and evaluation framework and look at examples of frameworks.