ABSTRACT
The floor discussion focused on the flow of information from the community to the national level and on the subjectivity of information gathered at community level. John Eriksson observed that many of the indigenous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) worked directly with target populations, whereas many of the international NGOs channelled their aid through the governments of target countries. In addition, NGOs themselves were capable of conducting evaluations, although they tended to use more qualitative tools. A participant asked if any methods were available to identify the unintended benefits of intervention programs. Timothy Marchant observed that some countries had shown an increasing tendency toward regional rather than national decision-making, but that this trend might present a significant challenge to evaluation of needs or program impact. What made the difference between qualitative and quantitative approaches more evident was that subjectivity was simply more open and easier to see in the more qualitative approaches. Qualitative information should at most serve to enrich a study.
