Big Data and Data Analytics for Monitoring and Evaluation

Course overview

M&E teams now have access to far more data than before: mobile surveys, administrative systems, mobile phone records, satellite imagery and social media. Turning that data into evidence requires analytical skills beyond basic spreadsheets. This data analytics for M&E course gives M&E professionals the practical skills to analyse large and complex datasets.

The first week builds core analytics: data sources for M&E, data management and cleaning at scale, exploratory analysis, statistical analysis for programme results, and visualisation and dashboards in Power BI. The second week introduces advanced methods: working with R and Python for reproducible analysis, big data sources such as satellite imagery and administrative records, predictive analytics and machine learning basics, text analysis of qualitative feedback, data ethics and protection, and integrating analytics into M&E systems. Participants work on laptops with real anonymised datasets and produce an analytical report and dashboard.

Participants leave able to analyse large M&E datasets and present evidence that guides programme decisions.

What you will be able to do

• Identify traditional and big data sources for M&E
• Clean and manage large datasets
• Conduct exploratory and statistical analysis of programme data
• Build dashboards in Power BI
• Use R and Python for reproducible analysis
• Apply basic predictive analytics and machine learning
• Analyse qualitative text data
• Apply data ethics and protection in analytics

Who should attend

For M&E, research and data staff who already know basic M&E and want advanced analytical skills. Participants should bring a laptop and be comfortable with Excel.

• Monitoring and evaluation specialists
• Data analysts
• Research officers
• Statisticians
• Programme managers who use data
• County and ministry data officers

Course outline

Week 1

Week 2

Fees are per participant in US dollars and cover tuition, course materials and your certificate. Travel and accommodation are not included.