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The Assessing Communication for Social Change project

Addressing the challenges of evaluating communication for development projects

Initiatives such as community radio programs are playing an important role in positive social change and community development in areas such as HIV/AID, human rights and poverty reduction in Nepal. However, project staff and others involved with these projects often experience many challenges with rigorously and effectively monitoring and evaluating the impacts of these initiatives. In addition, project staff often have limited skills and experience with research and evaluation methods.

A key challenge for communication for development projects is that funding agencies often require them to conduct traditional forms of evaluation that focus inappropriately on individual behaviour change and do not take the wider social context and local communication processes sufficiently into account. The Assessing Communication for Social Change (AC4SC) project aims to address these issues.

About the AC4SC project

This action research project is being conducted from 2007 – 2011 by a team from Queensland University of Technology and the University of Adelaide in Australia in collaboration with its project partner Equal Access Nepal. The project is developing and testing an innovative and empowering approach to assessing the impacts of communication for development projects.

The research team is working closely with Equal Access Nepal staff, a network of community researchers in five districts in Nepal, local stakeholders, and community participants to assess the impacts of two community radio programs: Saathi Sanga Manka Khura (Chatting with my best friend) and Naya Nepal (New Nepal).

Project aims

  • To design and trial a participatory methodology for evaluating the social change impacts of community radio programs.
  • To develop more appropriate, locally-defined indicators of social change in the context of development communication.
  • To build the evaluation skills and capacities of local staff and community members in observing, recording, analysing and reporting on the impacts of radio initiatives at the community level.

Building on other research

The project builds on previous and current research in Nepal and other South and South East Asian countries which is using ethnographic action research (EAR) to investigate the role of information and communication technologies in poverty alleviation and positive social change (see Finding a Voice).

Taking a participatory and ethnographic approach, EAR builds the capacity of media initiatives to monitor and evaluate and then improve practices as part of their ongoing development. It focuses on the wider context of information and communication flows and channels, and uses media as a tool for action research, exploring issues in a community, managing and collecting data, and facilitating online networks of EAR researchers.

The project is developing and adapting the EAR approach to assess if it can become a whole organisation approach, rather than the responsibility of an individual EAR researcher. We are also setting up systems and processes that aim to embed the AC4SC methodology into the day to day operations of EAN. Our aim is to make the process sustainable and to develop EAN into a learning organisation that constantly improves what it does.

What does this project mean for communication for development projects in Nepal?

  • Builds capacity in monitoring and evaluating the impacts of initiatives and assessing their impacts, using innovative and empowering methods
  • Provides access to expertise, knowledge, information, advice and support and practical, easy to use tools for researching and evaluating initiatives
  • Encourages initiatives to build M&E into their everyday activities
  • Identifies more appropriate and realistic indicators of change, based on the benefits that community members give priority to
  • Increases community involvement and ownership of initiatives, therefore ensuring greater sustainability and success in reaching social change goals

Project team contacts

Sanju Joshi, M&E Manager, Equal Access, Kathmandu. Email: sjoshi AT equalaccess DOT org

Associate Professor Jo Tacchi, Project Leader, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia Email: j.tacchi AT qut DOT edu DOT au

Project funding

The AC4SC project is funded and supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant and Equal Access Nepal

Project outputs

The major project output will be a transferable participatory impact assessment methodology.

To date we have produced the following reports/papers from the project:

The value of participatory action research for managing a collaborative ICT impact assessment project in Nepal

Challenges, issues and contradictions in a participatory impact assessment project in Nepal

Developing a participatory impact assessment approach and action research culture within a communication for social change organisation in Nepal

Of related interest is the following:

Action Research and New Media: Concepts, Methods and Cases