Evaluating sport-for-development

Abstract

This is the second in a series of three articles that considers the relationship between sport and furthering international development assistance. The first highlighted a significant growth in this relationship, yet evaluation of sport-for-development was criticized for being insufficient. This article therefore details the current level of evaluation of sport-for-development and highlights the approaches used whilst contextualizing it against the evaluation debate in development studies. The picture that emerges is that considerable evaluation is being conducted, particularly of programmes that have won plaudits. They tend to employ a positivist logical framework either by itself or as part of a blended methodology with some instances of participatory methods also. Concerns expressed about these approaches in the general development literature are traced in sport-for-development evaluation.