Lessons from an Outcome Oriented Approach
The Centrality of Protection calls for humanitarian action to focus first and foremost on reducing protection risks. Results‑Based Protection puts this into practice by prioritizing community‑informed, outcome‑oriented approaches to program design, implementation, and learning. A core element of this approach is measuring outcomes—not just activities or outputs—to understand whether protection risks are actually changing and why.
This need has become more urgent in the context of the IASC humanitarian “reset,” where agencies are expected to adapt quickly to volatile crises under severe resource constraints. In this environment, traditional monitoring approaches are often insufficient. No single MEAL method can meet the competing demands of donor accountability, learning, adaptation, and community accountability. A “bricolage” approach[1]—deliberately combining and adapting multiple methods—offers a practical way forward.
This brief examines how bricolage was used to build an outcome‑oriented measurement strategy through a collaboration between InterAction, two international NGOs, and their local partners. The case shows how qualitative, outcome‑focused methods can complement required quantitative indicators, even in fragile, resource‑constrained settings.
- Bricolage in Outcome-Oriented Methods
Bricolage, a term coined by French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, refers to the creative recombination of existing materials. In outcome oriented evaluation, it involves adapting and combining elements of different MEAL methods to create a purpose-built measurement framework. Rather than relying on a single “gold standard,” strong program design begins with understanding an intervention’s challenges, needs, and opportunities, and building a measurement approach that balances these competing factors. The central challenge is constructing a bricolaged strategy that prioritizes among these aims by drawing on the comparative strengths of different methods.
Why Outcome Oriented Methods Matter
Traditional quantitative indicators struggle to capture protection outcomes, especially in conflict settings. Protection risks are sensitive, change non‑linearly, and are heavily shaped by conflict dynamics beyond any single intervention. Quantitative data can show whether change occurred, but rarely explains how, why, or with what unintended effects.
Outcome‑oriented methods address these gaps by using participatory, qualitative approaches to understand changes in protection risk over time. They capture both intended and unintended outcomes, support adaptation during implementation, and strengthen accountability to affected communities as well as donors. Originally developed in development contexts, these methods have been adapted for humanitarian settings with heightened security, confidentiality, and data‑protection concerns.[2]
This case draws on two such methods: results journals and outcome harvesting.
- Results journals (from Outcome Mapping) track incremental progress along a theory of change using observable “progress markers,” from early signs of change to more ambitious outcomes. Program staff and community partners document and reflect on these changes regularly.
- Outcome harvesting identifies concrete examples of change—anticipated or not—and works backward to assess how a project contributed. It is typically conducted at the midpoint or end of a project and is well suited to capturing complex, indirect effects.
Case Overview
The project operates in a fragile post‑conflict setting and aims to reduce harm to civilians by engaging armed actors through trusted local intermediaries—particularly priests— while strengthening community self‑protection and collective advocacy. Priests and community leaders receive training in humanitarian negotiation and advocacy, while parallel efforts reinforce community governance, self‑protection strategies, and visible markers of neutrality.
This context makes outcome‑oriented measurement especially valuable. While the project includes a high‑level quantitative target—a 40 percent reduction in IHL violations—worsening conflict dynamics make it difficult to attribute changes to the project alone. Outcome‑oriented methods help disentangle project contributions from broader trends, while drawing on strong local relationships to generate credible, grounded evidence.
The Measurement Framework
The partners designed a mixed measurement strategy that combines donor‑required quantitative indicators with outcome‑oriented methods. Quantitative tools—baseline and endline surveys, routine monitoring, and conflict data—provide accountability and high‑level trend analysis. These indicators track perceived compliance with humanitarian norms, advocacy efforts by religious leaders, and the establishment and effectiveness of community protection mechanisms.
To deepen learning, the project uses results journals along a central change pathway: if priests are equipped to advocate on IHL with armed actors, compliance with humanitarian norms will increase. Priests and project staff complete journals monthly, reflecting on progress markers ranging from integrating IHL into advocacy to voluntary compliance by armed groups. Joint reflection sessions allow participants to identify patterns, manage risk, and adapt strategies, with MEAL teams aggregating insights across locations.
Figure 1: Example Results Journal
Outcome harvesting is planned at the end of the project to assess broader impacts across two domains: armed actor behavior and community self‑protection. Its open‑ended structure allows the project to capture unintended outcomes and understand how different elements of the intervention interact.
Bricolage in Practice
This strategy does not apply every method everywhere. Instead, it selectively uses each tool where it adds the most value. Quantitative indicators meet donor requirements and track overall trends, while outcome‑oriented methods focus on the parts of the theory of change where learning is most critical and attribution most difficult.
Resource constraints shape these choices. Donor accountability requirements absorb most MEAL capacity, limiting how widely outcome‑oriented methods can be applied. The partners therefore prioritized results journals along the highest‑risk, most complex change pathway—dialogue with armed actors—where regular reflection and adaptation are essential. Strong relationships with priests made this feasible, and the journals provided a structured way to monitor risk and adjust approaches as conditions evolved.
Outcome harvesting complements this by addressing broader project‑level questions that journals alone cannot answer, such as the effectiveness of community self‑protection mechanisms and how different strategies reinforce one another. Where funding is limited, the partners are considering lighter‑touch adaptations, such as narrowing geographic scope or simplifying methods, while preserving core learning functions.
Figure 2: Example Outcome Harvest
Key Takeaways
No single MEAL method can meet all objectives in complex humanitarian contexts. Bricolage—thoughtfully combining and adapting methods—allows organizations to balance accountability, learning, and feasibility under constraint. Quantitative indicators offer scale and comparability; outcome‑oriented methods provide insight into process, meaning, and causality.
Even with efforts to contain costs, donor accountability requirements consume most available MEAL resources, leaving limited capacity to apply outcome-oriented methods across the full theory of change or in every location. As a result, the organizations prioritized where these methods could generate the greatest learning value relative to their cost. Results journals demand sustained engagement but provide a rich, longitudinal view of progress and create structured spaces for reflection and adaptation. Outcome harvesting, by contrast, is time-bound and less suited to ongoing learning, but excels at surfacing both intended and unintended outcomes across diverse stakeholders.
Based on these trade-offs, the organizations chose to prioritize results journals along their central change pathway, particularly priests’ use of IHL to influence armed actors, where strong relationships, trust, and relative security make sustained documentation feasible. However, they judged this insufficient to answer broader project-level impact questions across multiple pathways of their theory of change. To address this, they planned a project-end outcome harvest to explore these complex dynamics. Recognizing funding uncertainty, they also identified fallback options, such as scaling back outcome harvesting to a lighter internal process or concentrating results journals in the highest-risk areas, in order to preserve core learning functions under resource constraints.
By deliberately sequencing and tailoring methods to context, capacity, and learning priorities, humanitarian actors can design measurement systems that are credible to donors, useful to practitioners, and meaningful to the communities they aim to serve.
RBP Questions
1. How can bricolage approaches help reconcile donor accountability demands with the need for adaptive, context-responsive learning?
2. In resource-constrained settings, how should humanitarian actors allocate limited resources for monitoring and learning across multiple initiatives or project locations?
3. Consider the protection projects you are aware of. Which actors would need to be engaged to understand their impact? Which staff members would be best positioned to engage those actors, and what barriers might limit that engagement?
4. How might outcome-oriented approaches reshape relationships between program teams and MEAL teams, particularly in high-risk protection environments?
5. What institutional incentives would need to change for outcome-oriented measurement to become standard practice for humanitarian projects?
[1] Aston, Tom, and Marina Apgar. The Art and Craft of Bricolage in Evaluation. 24. https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/the-art-and-craft-of-brico-lage-in-evaluation/. Centre for Development Impact Practice Paper, 2022.
[2] For a fuller overview of outcome-oriented measurement approaches in humanitarian contexts, useful starting points can be found at: “Gender-Based Violence Prevention: A Results-Based Evaluation Framework”. InterAction, 2021, https://protection.interaction.org/focus-areas/gbvpef/; “A Measurement Framework to Support Implementation of the Centrality of Protection”. InterAction, February 2025. https://protection.interaction.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/InterAction_MeasurementFramework_DIGITAL.pdf.