| dc.description.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. | |
