Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Public Participation

The Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Public Participation provides an overview and set of tools for assisting water planners is assessing their strategies and techniques for community engagement. The Guide uses a framework which is based on a comprehensive review of national and international approaches, detailed in Volume 1 of the Collaborative Water Planning project reports

The framework and several of the tools outlined have been piloted in the evaluation of case studies of water planning in Northern Australia, as part of the Tropical Rivers and Coastal Knowledge (TRaCK) Collaborative Water Planning Project. The Guide is intended to assist water planners and community stakeholders monitor and evaluate community engagement throughout a water planning process, measure progress against a set of shared objectives and make adjustments that improve the overall outcomes from the engagement. It evaluates the extent to which community engagement and public participation serves as:

• a mechanism for improved decision-making;
• a facilitator of social process;
• a means of improving outcomes; and
• a pathway for positive changes in the community.

The Guide draws on the participatory monitoring and evaluation (or PM&E) approach. In PM&E, researchers, agencies and the community participate as co-evaluators. Negotiation and deliberation is used to generate agreement on what should be measured, and how. Approaches to PM&E are now widespread. The challenge faced by planners is to adapt these to water planning processes, particularly for assessing plans manage trade-off decisions and deal with risk and uncertainty. This guide is intended to help planners meet this challenge, and through this, develop a framework for evaluation based on adaptive management principles.

Citation

Mackenzie, J., Nolan, S., and Whelan, J. (2009). Collaborative Water Planning: Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Public Participation. Collaborative Water Planning: Volume 5. Charles Darwin University, Darwin.

See here for the other volumes in the TRaCK Collaborative Water Planning Project.