Paper short abstract:

Development evaluators have paid relatively little attention to the inclusion of people with disabilities within evaluation processes. Their voices have often remained unheard in development evaluations despite the disproportionately high representation of people with disabilities among the poor.

Paper long abstract:

Very little is known on the implications of the development agenda on people with disabilities. This is partly due to the fact that disability has been ignored for a long time in general development discourse. However, another reason is the continuing disregard towards silent voices within development monitoring and evaluation (M&E) processes.

The nature and effect of including silent voices, particularly those of people with disabilities, in evaluation processes of development interventions are clearly under-researched. Stakeholder inclusion in M&E processes has gained support on the pretext that it might empower program recipients, ensure validity, enhance use, promote social justice and improve relevance and accuracy of the evaluation results. Thus far, however, there is little evidence to assume that inclusion in the evaluation process is inherently positive, empowering and at least not harmful. In addition, stakeholder inclusion seems to entail a trade-off with other evaluation standards such as feasibility. Even though validated, structured research tools have increasingly become available, involving marginalized stakeholders remains challenging due to potential unequal power relationships, additional resource investments (e.g. training), logistical difficulties, ethical concerns. Ensuring genuine participation might also require researchers and evaluators to share control, and recognize and tolerate uncertainty which may not always be allowed for by the evaluations' commissioners.

The theoretical framework presented in this paper will bring these elements together and will allow for a better understanding of the perceived benefits and feasibility of including people with disabilities in evaluation processes in order to foster disability-inclusive development and evaluation.