We can help evaluate your participatory programme or project using Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology. It is a qualitative evaluation technique.
MSC fits with Make (Good) Trouble’s ethos of putting young peoples’ and families’ voices at the heart of any intervention and programme. We believe that MSC is a strong evaluation tool that can help inform the future direction and effectiveness of a programme based on direct learning from participants.
MSC is a transparent system that is based on listening to participants. It helps you to build a rich picture of what is happening by raising the voices of people involved. It identifies what changes they have found to be most valuable as a result of your programme. MSC is particularly useful for initiatives where there may not yet be agreement between stakeholders on what outcomes are the most important for a programme or intervention.
How it works
MSC is a qualitative, participatory monitoring and evaluation technique using story collecting, panel discussion, analysis and evaluation.
- We help you to engage with stakeholders raising interest in the evaluation process and getting buy-in.
- We will work with you to define the ‘domains of change’ – a broad definition at the outset, that will be defined by programme users as stories are collected – and the reporting period which could be during the life of the project, or covering a specific part of it.
- Our young story collectors collect stories of significant change. Make (Good) Trouble uses a peer-to-peer approach: our trained story collectors are involved in every part of the process helping you to design and develop an evaluation that engages positively with young people, drawing out high quality insights.
- At the heart of the MSC process is the selection of stories with the single most significant account of change. This involves creating a panel of stakeholders and documenting the discussion. This provides valuable insights for your programme – and they’re often surprising!
- All stories and panel data can be housed in a secure MSC database allowing effective analysis and management of the data giving you more in-depth insights about your programme.
- Learnings feed into effective change management of your programme or project, ensuring it’s fit for purpose at every step of the way.
- An additional benefit of MSC is that it creates compelling content ideas that you can feed to your communications and promotion teams.
Further (and essential) reading for anyone looking to implement MSC for their programmes is The ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) Technique: A Guide to Its Use written by Rick Davies and Jess Dart, who developed the tool.
If you are interested in finding out more about how we can help you evaluate and transform your programmes and projects, get in touch.
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