Field
Measurement that runs with the program, not after it.
Field is an ongoing measurement function embedded in a program while it operates, rather than a study that arrives at the end. The idea is simple: make the work you’re already doing a little more evidence-rich every month, so you’re learning as you go instead of waiting years to find out.
The shift
From evaluation as an event to measurement as a function.
Evaluation as an event
A thing that happens to a program.
Commissioned, endured, and delivered too late to change much: a verdict that arrives after the decisions it might have informed have already been made.
Measurement as a function
A thing built into how the program runs.
Drawing on the records the program already produces, so evidence accumulates continuously as the work goes on. Nothing extra to perform for the evaluators; the measuring is part of the operating.
What you get
A program that tells you what’s working while you can still act.
Continuous, decision-useful signal: how faithfully the program is being delivered, where it’s drifting, what’s moving and what isn’t, reported honestly, at the level the data supports.
Over time, an evidence base that compounds instead of resetting with every new study. A signal that something is not working, caught while there is still time to change it, is worth more than a flattering number at an endline. The program gets sharper as it runs, and the cost of knowing is carried by the work itself.
Who it’s for
A funder or operator with a program already in motion.
Field is for work that’s live and worth learning from continuously, where you’d rather build measurement in than commission another endline.
It often begins where a Read leaves off: once you know what a program can honestly claim, Field is how you keep finding out. It runs on the same method as everything else we do: the same standards, the same discipline about what the evidence will and won’t bear.
You are not required to have a research team or a methodologist on staff. Prova does the measurement; the program brings the records it already keeps and what it knows about the people it serves.
Start a conversation
Tell us what you’re trying to learn as you go.
If a program is already running and you’d rather learn from it continuously than wait for an endline, that’s the conversation to have. The first conversation is a fit check.
Start a conversation