'Learning and Change' in the PRGA Program: A Framework for Evaluation

A central goal of the PRGA Program has been to affect change in the research process. And the strategic elements to achieve this goal have been through:

• Development and improvement of gender-sensitive participatory methodologies
• Institutional change
• Capacity development
• Partnerships and networks

Since its inception in 1997, the Program's focus on these 4 strategic elements has undergone considerable transformations. At the heart of this transformation process are the evolving responses to the Program's understanding of the question: "what brings about change processes?" Based on an analysis of research experience, feedback from Program partners, and the general literature on change, we now recognize that there are 3 distinctive types of change taking place. The types of change described below have variously informed Program priorities and activities and must be viewed as interrelated and occurring simultaneously rather than in separate and distinctive stages. They provide an overall framework for assessing Program impact, through a process of continuous learning and change.

• The first type can be described as 'evidence-based change', wherein, activities were developed and implemented with the assumption that change in research processes can occur if sufficient evidence is be provided through empirical research. The concept of change is linear and deterministic in that change (evidence of success) is assumed to be directly proportional to the input.
• The second type can be described as 'change through accountability', wherein, activities were developed and implemented with the assumption that change will occur in the research organization when accountability mechanisms are put in place. A demand for transparency by end users combined with them holding research organizations to account produce the needed changes. While the concept of change is similarly deterministic the input or action in this case is more clearly 'spelled-out'.
• The third type can be described as 'change through innovation'. The basic assumption is that change processes are complex. Change happens in ways that are less deterministic and, as a result of institutional innovations and creative agency of actors. Moreover, these changes or 'successes' are often the 'unintended' consequences of interventions. They also require investigative approaches that attribute 'success' in broader terms than cost/benefits, as well as to these circumstances of creative agency and institutional innovations that are prior to, and occur independently of interventions. Interventions, in this sense, are viewed less as central catalysts and more as incidentally 'supportive' to existing webs of 'creative agency' that generate institutional innovations or change.