The study at a glance
The synthesis was commissioned by the UNESCO IOS Evaluation Office to assess performance across UNESCO’s Major Programmes, and was carried out between March and June 2025 by a team led by Buddhi Consultancy with IOS evaluation staff, overseen by a reference group of twelve senior UNESCO managers.
The team ran a thematic analysis of the fifty reports against the synthesis questions, using two analytical frameworks: one mapping each evaluation to UNESCO’s strategic outcomes and the SDGs, and one assessing findings against the OECD-DAC criteria. The publication reports that this analysis was supported and triangulated with results from Evidano, with the synthesis findings remaining researcher-led.
How Evidano fit the workflow
- 1Fifty evaluation reports as input
Four corporate and forty-six decentralized evaluations, plus UNESCO strategy and planning documents.
- 2Thematic analysis
Common threads were identified across evaluations to gather evidence against the synthesis questions.
- 3Supported and triangulated with Evidano
The publication reports that results from Evidano helped support and cross-check the team’s analysis.
“The analysis of the fifty evaluation reports and relevant UNESCO strategic and planning documents was further supported and triangulated with results emerging from an analysis conducted with the help of the AI tool AILYZE.”
“developed specifically for evaluation purposes and is increasingly tested and applied across several United Nations Agencies evaluation offices.”
“The findings presented in this Synthesis are derived entirely from the analysis of the fifty evaluation reports finalised during 2024/early 2025”
Two ways to work through qualitative data
Manual reading and coding of dozens of documents. Slow, repetitive triangulation by hand. Hard to scale across a large, varied corpus.
AI-assisted thematic analysis across many documents. Faster cross-checking and triangulation. Researchers keep review, interpretation and sign-off.
The study describes its AI tool use openly, an example of disclosing AI-assisted analysis in a methods section.
In the synthesis, Evidano supported and triangulated the analysis while researchers retained interpretation and judgement.
Fifty multi-scale reports spanning sectors and regions, the kind of large, varied qualitative corpus Evidano is designed for.
The publication notes Evidano is increasingly tested and applied across several UN agency evaluation offices.