Develop a monitoring and evaluation plan

M&E activities are an important part of any behaviour change campaign.

Monitoring is a continuous process of gathering and assessing information to determine whether your campaign is on track to deliver on your goals. Monitoring activities are frequently used during planning, development and implementation, and focus on elements such as campaign intensity and reach, the audience’s understanding of campaign messages and message recall.

Evaluation is an objective and systematic process that is usually planned for one or multiple intervals during, for e.g., implementation, midline or following your campaign to measure the results of the intervention – often as the difference between the planned and achieved results. Campaign-related evaluation activities typically focus on measuring behaviour change.

Preparation for M&E activities should begin during programme planning with an M&E technical specialist or team. Together with the programme team, the M&E technical specialist guides M&E planning and learning activities, including selection of programmatic indicators, development of tools for data collection, outcome evaluation, and analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. They may receive additional support from the creative agency, CAC, CMT or an external research organisation.

An M&E Plan must be developed to ensure that systems are in place to monitor the programme, identify areas for improvement that can be addressed during the campaign, and evaluate whether the campaign is successful. As monitoring activities are performed consistently while the campaign is running and evaluation activities are normally conducted at specific stages, for e.g., baseline, midline, endline; both types of activities need to be planned prior to implementation.

While improved infant and child nutritional status is important, improving child nutritional status is not an SBCC campaign goal because a campaign alone may not be enough to move the needle on infant and child nutritional status.