The Centre for HIV-AIDS Prevention Studies

Community-Led, Community-Loved, Community Trusted

Data Management, Monitoring and Evaluation

CHAPS has a fully fledged MERL department that offers a comprehensive multidimensional approach to its M&E consulting services.

Enhance And Optimise Your Organisation Through The Following:

Identify and understand the various roles and responsibilities inherent in the monitoring and evaluation of a project or organisation.

M&E integration and employee engagement at all levels of the organisation and job specs.

Streamline plans for data collection, analysis, use, and data quality.

Specific strategies and tools to encourage informed decision making.

Smart and efficient achievement of organisational and programmatic goals and objectives.

Plan and implement the necessary M&E activities that are imperative to ensure overall M&E effectiveness.

The CHAPS M&E programme is based on the concept of adaptive management to influence management decisions, to promote performance-based decision making. Adaptive management recognises that biological and socio-economic systems are inherently changing and unpredictable and thus, addresses these uncertainties by monitoring decision-making results and re-examining choices in light of these results and on new information that becomes available. Adaptive management is ideal for learning about and understanding complex systems and structures that we encounter in our healthcare and socio-economic landscape in SA.

It encompasses the following:

  • Looking at the outputs and results, as well as the underlying reasons explaining the outcome, and then adapting the strategy accordingly.
  • It is an iterative re-evaluation process where the information is used for learning and adapting actions and the conceptual framework.
  • The re-evaluation process using the adaptive management approach to decision making involves a series of feedback loops which include planning, implementation, monitoring, research, and subsequent re-examination of management decisions based on new information that may alter existing plans and priorities. This encourages problem solving by reexamining premises and goals.
  • This provides managers and decision makers with information which tracks outcomes according to a series of past or present management decisions.
  • Feedback between all stakeholders, e.g. the public, managers, scientists and decision makers, is a fundamental component of the adaptive management strategy, as well as its periodic assessment.