WDI Authors: Let’s End the Assessment Debate
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Impact assessment has been part of international development for more than half a century. However, debate continues on its value and varying methodologies. Heather Esper and Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi of WDI’s Performance Measurement Initiative weigh in on the subject in a special issue of Thinkers magazine focused on the Base of the Pyramid.
![](https://wdi.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/wdi-authors-lets-end-the-assessment-debate1.jpg)
Esper and Fatehi wrote that part of the problem is that the debate gets bogged down in the different terms people use – assessment, evaluation, measurement. But whatever it is called, the authors argue that it is necessary so that organizations understand how well they are doing in their mission.
Read the article here.
Thinkers is a quarterly thought leadership magazine with articles, interviews, and thought pieces from the brightest thinkers in the areas of economics and governance; philosophy and literature; science and technology; and management. It has a total readership of more than 40,000.
The latest issue of Thinkers was published in conjunction with the BoP Global Summit July 16-17 in Burlington, Vermont. Esper, Program Manager for Performance Measurement, led a working group at the summit on “Evaluating the State of Assessment: Focusing on Value Creation.” It highlighted tools and methodologies businesses can use at various stages of growth to understand their impact; and using this data to inform decision-making in order to increase the value they create.