Impact Evaluation in Practice

Course objective: 

Impact evaluations are a key tool for making evidence-informed decisions to increase the impact of projects, policies and organizations. The objective of this course is to enable participants to use existing impact evaluations for strategic and operational decision-making, and to commission and manage new impact evaluations when needed. The course provides an overview of widely used quantitative methods for impact evaluation and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. It enables participants to identify appropriate methods and studies to answer their impact evaluation questions considering the characteristics and context of the intervention. It will also support them in increasing pathways to increase the overall impact of an organization. Participants will discuss and learn from existing impact evaluations within the field of development cooperation and policy. Using case studies from their own organizations, participants will learn all the steps involved in an impact evaluation.

Course participants must be familiar with results-oriented project cycle management (PCM) and basic evaluation concepts and processes.

Key topics:

• Key features of impact evaluations
• Use of existing impact evaluations for project planning and organizational learning
• Commissioning and managing an impact evaluation
• Overview of quantitative methods for impact evaluations
• Data collection and sampling
• Assessing the quality of impact evaluation proposals and reports

Duration: 24/09–26/09/2025, plus 1 day individual preparation prior to the course

Teaching format: Blended

ECTS points: 3

Examination: Written assignment completed during the course. A written assignment will be distributed during the course, and is due 4 weeks after the course completion

Course fee: CHF 950

Lecturers:

• Prof. Dr. Isabel Günther, NADEL
• Guest lecturers

For more information please visit nadel.ethz.ch

Registration starts 2nd of June 2025.

Photo credit: Dario Meili, DEC, ETH Zurich