Evaluating the impacts of conservation interventions on human wellbeing: Guidance for practitioners

Conservationists are increasingly seeing the importance of carrying out social impact evaluation to ensure accountability and to learn what works for both biodiversity and human wellbeing. A single toolkit or blueprint method cannot fit the diversity of intervention types and evaluation questions, and conservationists are faced with an array of decisions about the most appropriate methods and research designs to use.

This guidance aims to demystify the process of social impact evaluation and support practitioners in navigating through these methodological decisions taking into account the questions the evaluation aims to answer, the characteristics of the intervention, and the organisational capacity and resources available. It takes practitioners through the key steps in an evaluation:

1) thinking through the aims of the evaluation~2) defining relevant wellbeing outcomes and indicators~3) designing the evaluation to link outcomes to the intervention~4) collecting data including applying methods to account for bias, social dynamics and ethical considerations.

The guidance provides a range of real life case studies and ideas for appropriate methods and tools.