Graduation Data Quality and Sustainability Assessment

The assessment also seeks to determine whether data on graduation status are accurately collected and transmitted centrally, and whether graduated households continue to meet the graduation criteria 6-12 months after graduation from the OVC project. The assessment will employ several methods to address these questions, including qualitative interviews with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) officers or other project staff, review of casefiles to verify whether households are being assessed for graduation, and graduation verification assessments to determine whether the community-based organization (CBO) accurately assessed graduated households. The assessment will also involve cross-checks of data sources to assess whether data have been transmitted with fidelity from the primary source documents to the implementing partner (IP) management information system (MIS), and a recount of all graduated households using primary source documents and comparison to counts in DATIM/USAID. The sampling method will involve a multistage cluster sample, where IPs will be selected in consultation with the country USAID Mission, and two or three CBOs per IP will be selected purposively. All household casefiles that the CBO has recently assessed for graduation will be reviewed, and households will be stratified into two groups: households that have been assessed recently and graduated, and those that have been assessed recently for graduation and not graduated. The assessment will aim to include 40 households per CBO, with 20 households that have been graduated recently and 20 households that have been assessed recently and not graduated. The assessment will involve at least one semi-structured qualitative interview with an M&E officer or other staff member at each CBO, to explore any known issues in graduation assessment, data collection and reporting procedures, data management, and data flow. The interviewer will also review the sampled casefiles to verify the typical frequency at which the CBO conducts graduation assessments, whether graduation data were documented properly, the number of households that were assessed multiple times, and the length of time between household graduation assessments. The graduation verification assessment will use the Graduation Verification Assessment Tool to verify graduation criteria among 40 households per CBO. The assessment aims to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the graduation data quality and sustainability of OVC projects, and to support project improvement by identifying areas for improvement and providing recommendations for strengthening graduation data quality and sustainability. The assessment will also provide insights into the effectiveness of the graduation benchmarks and the data collection and reporting procedures, and will inform the development of strategies to improve graduation data quality and sustainability.