Unit 6: Programme Planning, Evaluation & Impact Assessment
Building an extension programme from situation analysis through to measuring whether it changed anything.
What this unit covers
Unit 6 is about the discipline of doing extension deliberately rather than reactively. It has a vocabulary problem for candidates: programme, plan of work and calendar of work are three different things, as are monitoring and evaluation, and formative and summative. Marks are lost here on precision more than on knowledge. Draw the planning process as a cycle, not a line, and the feedback loop that makes it a cycle will usually be worth a mark on its own.
The unit is broken into 10 syllabus areas, listed below. ASRB has set 10 descriptive questions from it that are on record, and there are 85 practice questions for it on this site.
Syllabus areas in this unit
- Concept, principles and steps of extension programme planning
- Situation analysis, objective setting and plan of work
- Programme planning models and the programme planning process
- Monitoring and evaluation: concepts and distinctions
- Types of evaluation: formative, summative, process, outcome, impact
- Logical framework approach and theory of change
- Indicators, baselines and endline surveys
- Impact assessment methods and attribution
- Cost-benefit analysis of extension programmes
- Participation of stakeholders in planning and evaluation
Key concepts
Programme planning. A continuous decision-making process in which people and extension workers jointly decide what problems to work on, what to achieve and how.
Formative and summative evaluation. Formative evaluation is carried out while a programme is running so it can be improved; summative evaluation judges the completed programme.
Impact assessment. Establishing what changed because of the programme, as distinct from what would have changed anyway.
Previous year questions from Unit 6
Descriptive questions ASRB has actually set from this unit, with the year in brackets.
- Program planning cycle with neat sketch (2021)
- Describe PERT with suitable example? (2023)
- Define programme planning. Explain importance and steps (2016)
- Differentiate between monitoring and evaluation (2016)
- What is evaluation? Write follow up strategies of evaluation (2021)
- What is Logical Framework Approach (LFA)? Uses of LFA with suitable example? (2023)
- What do you mean by program? Importance of program planning in agricultural extension and steps in program planning (2021)
- What is Social Impact Assessment? Different qualitative and Quantitative methods of impact assessment? (2023)
10 previous year questions from this unit in total. The full list is on the PYQ page.
Practice for this unit
- 85 descriptive practice questions across 5, 10 and 15 marks, in the Mains section.
- Objective practice for this unit in the MCQ section, with ASRB marking and full analysis.
- Full-length tests that draw on this unit alongside the other nine, in the mock tests.
The other units
- Unit 1: Fundamentals of Extension Education & Communication
- Unit 2: Extension Methods & Agricultural Journalism
- Unit 3: Information Communication Technologies
- Unit 4: Training & Human Resource Development
- Unit 5: Research Methodology in Extension Education
- Unit 6: Programme Planning, Evaluation & Impact Assessment (this page)
- Unit 7: Extension Management & Organizational Behaviour
- Unit 8: Entrepreneurial Development
- Unit 9: Agricultural Innovation System & Extension Approaches
- Unit 10: Gender Sensitization & Empowerment