RAN Small-scale meeting Effective and Realistic Quality Management and Evaluation of P/CVE, online event 05 March 2021

Due to the complex nature of preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) programmes, the target groups they address as well as the variety of involved stakeholders, implementing measures of process regulations and evaluations can be challenging. Quality management and evaluations are, however, indispensable to make grounded statements on the effectiveness of P/CVE work and prove to be of particular importance when it comes to creating a learning environment for practitioners and when seeking to improve accountability.

This small-scale expert meeting sought to discuss the perspectives of research and practice in the field of quality management and evaluations of P/CVE, in order to gain a better understanding of underlying challenges and feasible measures in this context. Based on this, the key objectives of the expert meeting were to explore ideas on how the RAN constituency can further engage with the topic, promote and facilitate the implementation of evaluations as well as ensure quality standards across the Network.

Key insights from this small-scale expert meeting included the following:

• In the design phase of evaluations, all stakeholders should formulate and agree upon comprehensive definitions of key concepts, a theory of change, the terms of reference and indicators of success.
• Considering ethical dimensions throughout evaluation processes is important, especially as the work of practitioners in secondary and tertiary prevention is based on (long-term) relationships and trust with clients.
• Information sharing between state and non-state as well as between security and non-security actors tends to be a sensitive topic in the daily practice of joint P/CVE work and needs to be considered when evaluating multi-stakeholder practices.
• The implementation of quality management measures and evaluation should be integrated into the work routines and daily practice of P/CVE work as much as possible.
• As multi-agency approaches become increasingly relevant, particularly in the context of secondary and tertiary prevention, quality assurance measures and evaluations should broaden their focus on evaluating multi-stakeholder structures. In this way, monitoring and evaluation can be conducted from a client centred comprehensive perspective.