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2006 Annual Client Survey
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Feedback from its clients is of great importance to determine Feedback from its clients is of great importance to determine IEG's progress along its results chain. Every year IEG surveys World Bank operational staff, executive directors, and external audiences on IEG products from the previous calendar year. The survey collects data on awareness, quality, influence, and use of evaluations. Each of these categories can be linked to a part of IEG's results chain and provide information about the level of achievement. In addition, the survey results help to better understand the nature of the linkages in the results chain. To improve its products, IEG also asks respondents for recommendations.
This year's surveys queried the target audiences of IEG products prepared during 2005. IEG surveyed a targeted sample of 4,285 internal clients and 2,759 external individuals. The internal response rate was 22 percent; the external response rate was 12 percent.
This page provides a short summary of the main findings of the survey. Please download the pdf for a full report of the survey results.
In a nutshell, the survey points to the following achievements and challenges ahead for IEG:
Achievements- Awareness of IEG reports has remained consistently high over the last two years.
- Bank staff and Executive Directors consider IEG reports very relevant for their work.
- Board members are largely satisfied with the quality of IEG evaluations and use them extensively to assess the Bank's activities at the sector and country level.
- External audiences were highly satisfied with the quality of IEG evaluations and considered them to be influential. Thus, IEG is successful in turning its evaluation knowledge into a valuable global public good.
Challenges ahead
To enhance its influence on operations and subsequently development outcomes IEG needs to:- improve its timeliness to provide information when decisions need to be made.
- deepen its analyses through more consultation and attention to the context of evaluated operations.
- focus on the operational value of its findings.
- provide more summaries and make IEG content more accessible online
On the specific categories of awareness, quality, influence and use the survey found the following:
Readership and awareness: These are indicators of the effectiveness of IEG's dissemination. The results chain specifies dissemination as the link between outputs (evaluation reports) and intermediate outcomes (learning from evaluation). World Bank staff need to be aware of IEG evaluations to apply the knowledge from evaluations to operations.- 56 percent of Bank staff who responded to the client survey were aware of the evaluation for which they were surveyed. Awareness was 58 percent in 2005 and 39 percent in 2004.
Quality: Clients' perception of the quality of IEG evaluations is an indicator of IEG's outputs. It also helps IEG to understand what clients expect from it's products and how to improve them to achieve more use.Influence: Clients' rating of ways in which IEG evaluations influence their work helps IEG to understand the strengths and weaknesses it has in impacting the work of the World Bank and serves as an indicator for the intermediate outcome.- All respondents agree that IEG has influence on their understanding of a subject area.
- Overall, IEG does better at compiling lessons and good practices than at providing staff with specific knowledge about results chains and how outcomes are linked to outputs.
Use: Understanding how operational staff use IEG evaluations is necessary to better target effective use and add value to the World Bank Group.- Bank staff use evaluations mostly for commenting on the work of others, making a case for a particular course of action, and providing advice to clients, and less for modifying strategies or operations or designing new projects or programs.
- Ninety percent of executive directors and their advisors respondents make use of evaluations for assessing the Bank's policies and procedures.
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Clients' Recommendations to IEG- A majority of staff recommended that IEG make its findings more operational. Respondents also recommended that evaluation teams obtain more evidence, broaden consultation with Bank staff, and improve depth of analysis.
Given these response rates, it has to be noted that the survey results are indicative for respondents, but cannot be generalized to the surveyed population.
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