The evaluation
The independent evaluation, commissioned by UNITAR’s Planning, Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Unit, assessed a project funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office to reinforce the Tanzania Peacekeeping Training Centre as a regional pre-deployment training hub. An independent evaluator interviewed 45 informants across all stakeholder groups, including a field mission to Tanzania in May 2023, guided by 26 questions across the OECD-DAC criteria and UNEG standards.
Documents were coded in Quirkos, recordings transcribed with Sonix, and the transcripts run through Evidano for exploratory theme analysis, with the resulting themes added to the codebook for comparative analysis across informants.
How Evidano fit the workflow
The publication describes a clear, traceable workflow from raw qualitative data to analysed themes.
- 1Transcribe.
Interview and focus group recordings were transcribed before analysis.
- 2Run exploratory theme analysis with Evidano.
Transcribed data was run for exploratory theme analysis.
- 3Add to the codebook.
Output was added to the codebook for comparative analysis, searching for emerging patterns, trends and divergence across informants.
- 4Cross-validate.
The evaluator relied on recordings, transcripts and notes to check theme accuracy, iterating and correcting where needed.
“Data collected from interviews and focus groups with primary sources, was further transcribed using Sonix®, and […] ran for exploratory theme analysis using AI-Lyze Pro and added to the codebook for comparative analysis in search for emerging patterns, trends and possible divergence in the viewpoints of informants”
“Mindful of the Beta stage of the tool, the evaluator has also relied on recordings, transcripts and notes taken to ensure accuracy of theme content, iterating the analysis, complementing, or correcting if needed.”
From bottleneck to workflow
Hand-coding hundreds of pages. Slow comparison across sources. Patterns easy to miss at scale. Hard to revisit and iterate.
Exploratory themes surfaced quickly. Comparative analysis across informants. Emerging patterns and divergence flagged. Researcher reviews, iterates, corrects.
Evidano use is named in the methods of a UNITAR evaluation, not a vendor case study.
Tool use was openly disclosed, with the evaluator cross-validating every theme.
Interviews, focus groups and 150+ documents across diverse stakeholder groups.
Evidano supported exploratory theme analysis while the researcher kept interpretive control.