methods approach. Unfortunately the planning of many development evaluations does not allow much time for team building, so often the result can be two separate strands of quantitative surveys not very clearly linked to in-depth case studies or other qualitative data collection.

A related challenge in many developing countries has been the fact that most senior officials in central finance and planning agencies have been trained in economics and quantitative methods and at least until recently many have been suspicious of qualitative methods that are “not really professional research” so many research and consulting agencies have had little incentive to develop a mixed method capacity. In the last few years many research agencies are trying to strengthen their capacity in mixed method approaches but this continues to be a weak area.

Another practical problem is the lack of local expertise in mixed method research in many countries. The more rigid division between quantitatively and qualitatively-oriented university faculties also means that in many countries not many courses are offered on mixed methods. It has been our experience that many university-based consulting centers that have a strong track record in quantitative research have found it difficult to integrate a solid qualitative component to their evaluation. Too often a few somewhat ad hoc focus groups are tacked on to the end of the quantitative evaluation with no clear link to the rest of the study.

There are also many practical logistical challenges in applying mixed methods in many development contexts. Many development evaluations require data collection in remote rural areas or in urban areas where security threats makes it more difficult to use the flexible approaches required by mixed methods. For example, in some studies all data collectors have to be transported together to remote locations and all need to arrive and leave at the same time so that qualitative interviewers do not have the flexibility to take advantage of invitations to social events such as weddings, parties, funerals that are excellent opportunities to observe the community in action. In many countries police or military authorities may also require exact details on who is to be interviewed.

# _Opportunities_

The growing interest in mixed methods, combined with recognition of the special challenges, presents a number of exciting opportunities for strengthening the use of mixed methods in development evaluations.

A first area of opportunity is in developing effective monitoring systems. While there is a widespread acceptance that monitoring is essential for good project implementation, much less thought has been given to the design of monitoring systems than to methods to evaluate project impact. Mixed methods with their ability for the rapid and economical collection of data customized to the characteristics of a particular program and providing information that can be easily contextualized can be very helpful in monitoring design.

While well designed monitoring systems can potentially provide a wealth of data to strengthen the evaluation design, as we saw earlier these benefits are only achieved if monitoring and evaluation are treated as two components of a program management system. This requires that the data requirements for the future impact evaluation are built into the monitoring systems in a 24