Performance, Quality and Strategy (PQS) Practice at Universalia
The PQS practice builds on Universalia’s thematic expertise across a wide range of sectors, its research credentials, and longstanding core area of work in evaluation to support organizations/institutions in improving the quality of their research and evaluations. In close collaboration with clients, PQS practice teams develop quantitative and qualitative assessment tools tailored to various types of research and evaluation products, e.g., terms of reference, inception reports, and draft/final reports. Quality assessments covering specific timeframes are aggregated to highlight trends in quality, good practices, and areas for improvement.
Additionally, the PQS Practice supports a broad range of clients, including United Nations Agencies and Multilateral Development Banks, in conducting independent evaluations of Country Strategies and Programmes. With these higher-level evaluations, organisations can enhance accountability (to their stakeholders) for the performance of their country programmes, while expanding the evidence base for the design of future strategies and programmes. To conduct these evaluations, Universalia draws on its roster of internal staff and key external development experts, often locally based. This provides the best combination of skills, language capacity and experience, as well as high levels of contextual relevance. Country Strategy and Programme Evaluations follow internationally agreed evaluation criteria such as relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact, and adopt methodological approaches that are essential for the delivery of robust evaluations, with strong buy-in from stakeholders, and a high level of usability.
Services we provide within this practice area include:
- Quality Assessment/Assurance of Evaluation and Research Products
- Development of Quality Assessment Tools and Processes
- Meta-analysis of Quality Assessments
- Independent Evaluations of Country Strategies and Programmes
Recent examples of projects include:
- External Post Assessment (EPA) Services for Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
- Independent Quality Appraisal of International Labour Organization (ILO) Project Evaluations
- Post Hoc Quality Assessment (PHQA) Services for Centralized and Decentralized Evaluations for World Food Programme (WFP)
- Quality Assurance Review Services for United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)
- Quality Assessment of a Sample of Evaluation Products for the African Development Bank (AfDB)
- Third Party Quality Assurance (TPQA) for Climate Adaptation Resilience (CARE) in South Asia Project implemented by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC)
- Evaluation of the Government of Rwanda and UNICEF Country Programme of Cooperation (2018-2024)
- Évaluation Formative du Programme de Pays Togo - UNICEF (2019-2023)
- Evaluation of Malawi WFP Country Strategic Plan 2019 – 2023
- Évaluation du plan stratégique de pays du PAM Haïti 2018-2022
- Évaluation formative du programme de pays entre l’UNICEF et l’union des Comores (2015-2021)
- African Development Bank Rwanda and Uganda Country Strategy and Program Evaluation (2012-2021)
- Évaluation Formative du Programme de Pays entre le Gouvernement de Madagascar et l’UNICEF (2015-2020)
Contact us
For more information, please contact Ms. Katrina Rojas, Senior Consultant and Practice Leader. E-mail: krojas@universalia.com. Phone: 514.485.3565 ext. 205.