ABSTRACT
The growing awareness of the nutritional problems in many developing countries, particularly on the African continent, has resulted in manifold nutrition interventions. Because of the substantial resources involved, either in the form of food aid, manpower, financial or other assistance, there is also a growing demand for evaluation of nutrition programmes on the part of both recipient and donor countries. For many years there was a tendency to relegate evaluation to a backseat position and evaluation of nutrition programmes was, in fact, something of a neglected art. Neglected because officers responsible for and charged with the daily management of nutrition programmes are mostly very practical people, aware of existing problems and equally aware of measures that need to be taken. Pressed by practical demands they often - understandably - feel that evaluation is too slow a process which, in the end, may not even produce conclusive results or concrete recommendations. The evaluation requirements, such as pre-testing of measuring instruments, pilot surveys, delineation of study conditions and selection of index and possible control children are elaborate and time-consuming. This is not to argue that evaluators are overly cautious in their approach. They, in their turn, are confronted with many different cultural settings and with programmes that often have unclear objectives, lack basic
information, do not keep adequate records and are difficult to distinguish from other influences on child nutrition. Yet, they still have to come up with useful suggestions and are generally expected to make the best of a very difficult job. Over the past ten years, however, the need for evaluation has increasingly been recognized. Programme officials no longer ignore evaluation, rather they have the task of balancing the need for evaluation against the resources that can be set aside for evaluation purposes and the degree of interference with day-to-day activities that is acceptable. These are often difficult decisions and the quality of the evaluation is directly dependent on them.
