The periodic collection of data to determine if activities are being implemented as planned is the definition of monitoring. This, as the name indicates, is a method that can be used to get information from the people who are part of the program, to learn all about the program. This will help to assess and make the necessary changes to the program.
The evaluation on the other hand, is something that is a retrospective assessment of performance against objectives at a particular point in time or after completion of a project. As the name indicates, the evaluation usually occurs not at the start of a program, but either during or at the end of a particular program. This will also help to assess the program.
There are various other differences between the monitoring and the evaluation. The differences are as follows.
1. The monitoring is a continuous process. There is no gap in the monitoring that occurs where one person is monitoring another person. The process as well as all the other activities that are related to the monitoring are usually seen when a person who is above a worker tries to look at the work of another person on a day to day or a continuous process. The evaluation on the other hand, is a intermittent process and is not continuous. There are specific points of time when the evaluation is done. The period between the evaluation are pre determined. The examples of these are the mid term evaluation or any other kind of evaluation.
2. The monitoring of a person or a program actually measures that are done by the individual or the list of activities that are done by the person. The process of evaluation, on the other hand, measures the objectives. Each is completely different from each other, though the process may seem very similar. The evaluation looks to find if the objectives have been adhered to while conforming to the objectives.
3. The process of monitoring is simpler than the evaluation process. In fact, it is usually done in-house by the people who are part of the same organization. This is the reason for the monitoring to be considered to be like the internal auditing. The process of evaluation on the other hand is like external auditing that happens in a company. The people who are part of the evaluation team can not only be from the same organization, but should also be from another organization and they will assess independently without any sort of bias.
4. The monitoring process tries to score the activities of a person and so it is often quantitative in nature. The evaluation process on the other hand is a qualitative process, more often than not. This means that the process does not have a rigid answer and is usually more complicated than the monitoring process.
5. As already explained, the monitoring process is done usually by insiders from the company. The process of evaluation on the other hand can involve a lot more outsiders than the number of insiders.
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