Theories And Approaches To Monitoring And Evaluation In Rural Project

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is an important modern method and means of project management. In recent decades, it is widely applied to the poverty alleviation programs of UN, public investment projects of some developed and developing countries. Agricultural project is one of the important field in which M&E is applied. M&E can significantly improve the decision effectiveness and efficiency of agricultural project, and also, it can possibly relieve the "project corruption" problem.The following contents are emphasized in this paper: (1) Explore the theoretic bases for M&E from classical economics, Welfare economics , Sustainable development theory and controlling theory of management. (2) Originally study the M&E supporting system--organization, institution and resource, advocate to establish a agricultural project committee as the project body of agricultural infrastructure development. (3) Extend time and space of M&E for agricultural program. Classify Monitoring as ex-project monitoring, monitoring in execution and post-project monitoring. Classify Evaluation as ex-project evaluation, middle project evaluation, accomplished project evaluation, post-project evaluation; Content of every kind of M&E is analyzed and index system for M&E is laid out. (4) Introduce the methods of collecting and analyzing data for M&E. Elaborate several usual methods of M&E: PRA, PERT/CPM, LFA, comparing method and integrated evaluation method. Illustrate the comparing method.