Measuring Outcome in Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage Programs

Abstract

This research focuses on the development of a Household Water Treatment and Safe Storage (HWTS) Outcome Monitoring Framework. Research is performed in a program surrounding a large-scale, market-based approach to administration of HWTS in Ethiopia and Malawi. Aqua for All, the host organization for my MSc thesis, has the lead in this ambitious HWTS program. Through literature review, quantitative, and qualitative assessment, and extensive consultation of important actors in the program, relevant parameters pertaining to HWTS outcomes and their subsequent means of assessment are identified and analyzed, in order to unveil those concepts most relevant for outcome assessment. After unveiling of these outcome parameters, their potentials for achievement and monitoring are translated to existing Outcome Monitoring Frameworks, in order to arrive to a specified HWTS Outcome Monitoring Framework that can be extrapolated to HWTS programs that employ an outcome- and market-based approach. It was found that the discussion pertaining to outcomes and their monitoring is one that is characterized by high levels of ambiguity in terms of what kind of outcomes pertain to whom. This necessitates clarification, which is what this research ambitions to realize. Additionally, it was found that myriad intermediating variables invalidate the ambition of unveiling statistically significant relationships between HWTS programs and their outcomes for their beneficiaries, thus necessitating rich qualitative data that sketches an elaborate account of the inner workings between HWTS programs and achieved outcomes. It is ambitioned for the HWTS Outcome Monitoring Framework to be able to be extrapolated to other market-based HWTS programs, in order for these programs to more easily and consistently delineate their outcome ambitions and monitor these during the succession of a program. This is to benefit the delineation of mutual expectations between relevant local and international partners and improve their collaboration, allowing for the creation of more sustainable means of distributing HWTS.