Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning | A Guide for NHRIs in the Asia Pacific Module 2: Developing your MEAL Framework In reality, the work of your NHRI is complex and many factors impact on whether your work is successful or not. Your outcomes are not expected to be produced by your activity alone; across all sectors, there is rarely one causal attribution between an activity and an outcome. Other external factors may have also played a role to make change happen (e.g. family violence in your country is reduced and your work contributed to this but was not the single cause. Other factors, such as political goodwill or civil society pressure, may also have played a role). More information is provided in Section 2.7 dependencies and assumptions. When defining your outcomes, think about the causal linkages between the activities, outputs and outcomes. Sometimes several short and medium-term outcomes lead to a long-term outcome (e.g. if several of your initiatives contribute to a reduction in family violence., try to make the links between your outcome levels realistic, logical and well-connected. Think about the story, “if we achieve X, it could contribute to X, which will contribute to X”). The SMART(A) framework (Figure 7) is useful for checking that your outcomes are logical and effective. It is also good practice to have a colleague, or your MEAL team, review them. Figure 7: How to develop SMART(A) outcomes SPECIFIC Is the particular impact or result you are trying to achieve, clear? MEASURABLE Is it possible to assess whether you are making progress toward the outcome and whether you have reached the outcome? ACHIEVABLE Is the outcome realistic with the available resources, expertise and time? RELEVANT Is the outcome appropriate and acceptable to, and shared by, priority stakeholder groups? Will it achieve the result/impact sought? TIMEBOUND Does the outcome include a realistic and achievable timeframe? ACCOUNTABLE Have those responsible for achieving this outcome been identified? 34