Impartiality

Impartiality in evaluation refers to conducting an evaluation without bias or favouritism, treating all aspects and stakeholders fairly.

Key aspects of impartiality in evaluation can include:

• Avoiding undue influence from personal beliefs, cultural background, or preconceptions.
• Collecting data in a neutral and fair manner, ensuring all relevant stakeholders are heard, not just service users.
• Analysing and interpreting data based on evidence rather than personal or political preferences.
• Reporting findings accurately and completely, including both successes and failures.

To support impartiality, evaluations might employ strategies such as:

• Having clear terms of reference (see transparency)
• Ensuring reliable data collection and analysis methods (see validity, rigour and bias reduction)
• Using transparent methods (see transparency)

Being aware of and managing one's own biases (see bias reduction). For example, the African Evaluation Principles, published in 2021 provide the following guidance:

• "T3. Acknowledge own dispositions. As evaluator or evaluation commissioner, monitor and recognize own values, worldviews, biases, practices and/or experiences that might unduly influence the credibility or integrity of the evaluation. Account for these during the design, execution and communication of the evaluation, and consider how they can be countered."

There are different views about the extent to which an evaluation can and should be objective and value-free. Impartiality is one of the standards developed by the United Nations Evaluation Group and intended to cover all UN evaluations:

"NORM 5 Impartiality

• 8. The key elements of impartiality are objectivity, professional integrity and absence of bias. The requirement for impartiality exists at all stages of the evaluation process, including planning an evaluation, formulating the mandate and scope, selecting the evaluation team, providing access to stakeholders, conducting the evaluation and formulating findings and recommendations.
• 9. Evaluators need to be impartial, implying that evaluation team members must not have been (or expect to be in the near future) directly responsible for the policy setting, design or management of the evaluation subject."