Qualitative Methods

From EvaluationWiki

Most Significant Change Methodology

The most significant change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory evaluation. In MSC, project stakeholders are encouraged to collect and submit stories of impact as related to them by clients. MSC does not make use of established indicators nor does it attempt to track quantitative data. Instead, it seeks to track and assess qualitative change in the form of impact or change stories of who did what, when and why, and the reasons the event was important.

The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique was invented by Rick Davies to meet the challenges associated with monitoring and evaluating a complex participatory rural development program in Bangladesh. The large scale and open-ended nature of the program’s activities posed a major problem for the design of any system intended to monitor process and outcome. Rick developed the MSC technique in an attempt to address these issues as part of the fieldwork for his PhD on organizational learning in non-government aid organizations.It has gone to become a widely accepted M & E tool, used in a variety of development initiatives and projects.

The process involves the collection of significant change (SC) stories from the field level, and the systematic selection of the most important of stakeholders or staff. This MSC Panel first search the collected stories for project impact. Once changes have been captured, the teams introduce regular and often in-depth discussions about the value of the reported changes. MSC is most commonly seen as an adjunct to more quantitative measures.

A pdf guide to the introduction and implementation of an MSC system can be found at[1]