Beyond the Numbers: How qualitative approaches can improve monitoring of humanitarian action

A recent ALNAP Scoping Paper found that many humanitarian agencies still struggle to apply qualitative approaches to monitoring. Previous research has also highlighted the persistent challenges that humanitarian practitioners face in the capture or use of qualitative monitoring data These challenges have manifested themselves in two ways. On the one hand organisations see qualitative approaches as cheap and quick and the data easy to collect. They rely on just a few familiar methods which results in research design and sampling that is often of poor quality. On the other hand, practitioners often express that they lack the confidence, skill and time to analyse and report qualitative results.