Compare methods

	Outcome Harvesting	Most Significant Change
Field	Public Policy	Public Policy
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2012	2005
Originator	Ricardo Wilson-Grau & Heather Britt	Rick Davies & Jess Dart
Type	Retrospective, outcome-led evaluation approach	Participatory, story-based monitoring and evaluation technique
Seminal source	Wilson-Grau, R., & Britt, H. (2012). Outcome Harvesting. Cairo: Ford Foundation MENA Office (revised November 2013).	Davies, R., & Dart, J. (2005). The 'Most Significant Change' (MSC) Technique: A Guide to Its Use.
Aliases	OH, Wilson-Grau Outcome Harvesting	MSC, MSC Technique, Story-Based Monitoring, Davies-Dart Most Significant Change
Related	4	4
Summary	Outcome Harvesting is a participatory evaluation approach, developed by Ricardo Wilson-Grau and Heather Britt, that identifies outcomes after they have occurred and then works backward to determine whether and how an intervention contributed to them. Instead of measuring progress against predefined targets, evaluators 'harvest' evidence of observable changes in the behaviour, relationships, actions or policies of social actors, then assess the program's contribution to each. It is designed for complex settings where cause-and-effect relationships are not fully understood in advance and outcomes cannot be specified ahead of time.	The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique is a participatory, story-based approach to monitoring and evaluation developed by Rick Davies and refined with Jess Dart. It involves the systematic collection of stories of significant change from the field and the deliberative selection of the most significant of these by panels of stakeholders. There are no predefined indicators; instead, value judgements about what change matters most are made transparently by those involved, making MSC especially suited to capturing unexpected and qualitative outcomes in complex programs.