Resilience is a compelling concept for development and humanitarian assistance because it can enhance practitioners’ understanding of the complex dynamics that influence peoples’ ability to prevent and respond to risk. Incorporating resilience analytics into humanitarian and development assistance can enable people, households and communities to sustain positive long-term development trajectories in the face of shocks and stresses, potentially reducing the need for humanitarian aid. The increased interest in resilience has sparked the need for investments in rigorous yet practical strategies for identifying, implementing and measuring resilience-building interventions. USAID’s Resilience Measurement Practical Guidance Note Series responds to this need by providing pragmatic guidance for practitioners to integrate core aspects of resilience measurement into their program assessments, design, monitoring, evaluation and learning.
The Resilience Measurement Practical Guidance Note Series synthesizes existing technical documents into pragmatic guidance to assist practitioners in integrating core aspects of resilience measurement into their program assessments, design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning.
In five parts, the series introduces key concepts and guides practitioners through the process of resilience measurement, from assessment to analysis. Unlike many other program impacts (nutrition levels, poverty, etc.), resilience is not an end in itself but rather an ability that shapes how and why outcomes change over time. This makes resilience measurement different from measurement of other program concepts, thus the need for this guidance.
7 Problématiques abordées dans cette publication (Affichage des numéro 70 - 10)
GN00 - Guidance Note Brief
USAID defines resilience as “the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth.” The ability to handle adversity and change without compromising future well being depends on a number of capacities and how they are used in the face of shocks and stresses. Resilience can be measured through these capacities and relating them to well-being outcomes.
GN01 - Risk and Resilience Assessments
Why a Systems Approach?
Systems thinking is a way of organizing a set of related units or elements and identifying the interconnections, patterns and structures that make up the whole. Understanding social-ecological systems, for instance, requires understanding how people think, engage with one another and their environment, and react to and affect changes from the local level to the national (or even global) level.
A systems approach may help to build effective resilience strategies and programming because it emphasizes consideration of the cross-scalar and interacting factors that influence the ability of people to prepare for and manage risk within complex, dynamic contexts.
GN02 - Measuring Shocks and Stresses
Investing resources in resilience building requires earnest efforts in resilience measurement and analysis, and an indispensable component of resilience measurement is shock measurement. Incorporating shock measurement into monitoring and evaluation frameworks serves two purposes. The first is to gain conceptual understanding of the complex relationships between disturbances, critical capacities and wellbeing to better design and evaluate initiatives focused on building resilience. The second is related to the fact that shocks and stresses pose significant operational threats to development gains.
GN03 - Resilience Capacity Measurement
Shocks and stresses often manifest in complex ways and across a range of local, regional, national and international levels. The abilities of people, households, communities, and institutions to manage the impacts of shocks and stresses are underpinned by several factors. In order to promote development gains under uncertain, high-risk conditions, it is important to consider which of these factors matter, for whom, and at what level.
Resilience capacities represent the potential for proactive measures to be taken in order to deal with shocks or stresses. In a resilience Theory of Change (ToC), capacities can be represented at the output level. As shown in Figure 1, capacities can be developed, supported or strengthened by program activities, and then contribute to effective responses to shocks and stresses. If the ToC holds true, then these responses enable people and institutions to achieve and maintain gains in well-being, despite exposure to shocks and stresses.
GN04 - Resilience Analysis
Guidance for conducting data analysis must begin with a discussion of the research process, as the analytical approach selected is driven by the research purpose and questions. For the purposes of this guidance note, the following four steps are integral to conducting any resilience analysis:
- Define research purpose: how will this analysis be used, by whom?
- Define research questions: based on the research purpose, what are the key research questions that would best serve the overall purpose?
- Explore range of methodological/analytical options: based on the research questions, what types of analyses are required, what indicators are needed, over what time period/frequency, etc.
- Select appropriate method(s) based on:
- Ability to respond to questions effectively and rigorously
- Data requirements
- Financial, time, and personnel constraints, etc.
GN05 - Design and Planning for Resilience Monitoring and Evaluation at the Activity Level
Before Planning Resilience M&E: Back to Basics
Resilience M&E has some elements that are distinct from traditional tools – however, they still require basic M&E systems to work. M&E capacity, including appropriate financial and human resources, information management systems and sound quality assurance will be needed as the resilience approach requires new and different measurement tools and analysis that will need to be accommodated.
GN06 - Recurrent Monitoring Surveys
There are several benefits to including an RMS in resilience-focused projects. Recurrent Monitoring Surveys have the ability to collect real-time (or near to real-time) data on resilience dynamics as they are unfolding. This allows teams to understand how individuals, households and communities are coping and responding in the face of these disturbances as they are happening. Collecting frequent data as shocks and stresses are happening or soon afterwards also reduces recall bias, and allows for more accurate data.4 If utilized, RMS data gives program teams the necessary information to make adjustments in program implementation and facilitates internal learning. For example, teams can use RMS data to identify optimal points for launching early shock responsive actions and other crisis modifiers. Recurrent Monitoring Surveys can also be combined with impact evaluations to shed light on short-term intervention effects to facilitate adaptive management and inform the overall impact evaluation to guide longer-term policy and programming change.
