GovEval TIG Week: Evaluating Civil–Military Programming – Ethical and Methodological Considerations by Kiely Barnard-Webster and Sarah Constantine

Date: Saturday, January 31, 2026

Hi, we are Kiely Barnard-Webster and Sarah Constantine, Managing Consultants at Guidehouse who recently spoke with the Washington Evaluators Association about monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in civil–military (Civ–Mil) programming. Through our work supporting Civ-Mil evaluations, we’ve seen firsthand how Civ–Mil evaluations introduce an additional layer of complexity to common ethical concerns across evaluation in fragile environments. The presence of military actors, donor policy objectives, and potential politicization of civilian participation can amplify both ethical and methodological risks, making standard approaches insufficient. We’re sharing some considerations for those interested in improving their M&E practice in fragile contexts and working with militaries.

What is Civ–Mil Programming?

Civil–military programming strengthens a military’s ability to engage with civilian populations. Civil-military activities may include medical civic action projects, infrastructure support, and information-sharing initiatives.

What is Civ-Mil Evaluation?

Evaluations of Civ–Mil programming are typically commissioned by donors such as the U.S. Department of State or Department of Defense. These evaluations inform decisions about whether programs are achieving intended objectives, like improving civilian-military relationships or building partner capacity. They also help donors assess risks, refine strategies, and justify continued investment. For evaluators, this means working in politically sensitive environments where ethical and methodological considerations are inseparable.

Lessons Specific to Civ-Mil Evaluation

First Lesson: Ensure Civilian Safety and Respect

Ethical challenges involve moral considerations like ensuring the evaluation is conducted responsibly and respects civilian participants, particularly regarding informed consent, confidentiality, and potential for harm.

• Civilian Non-Engagement: Civilians may deliberately choose not to engage in the evaluation of Civ-Mil programming. This is often a conscious strategy for self-preservation and safety, especially if there is a history of conflict with security forces. The challenge for the evaluator is how to proceed when those most affected by the programming may not feel safe enough to participate.
• The Evaluator’s Identity: If participants perceive a project’s donor negatively—perhaps seen as supporting a corrupt or violent military, the evaluator may be resented by association. Speaking with such an evaluator could spark distrust among peers and potentially put civilian participants at risk of retribution within their own community.
• Rad Resource: Better Evaluation’s Do No Harm Guidance Note.
• Stratification of Benefits: Evaluators must be aware of pre-existing political, ethnic, or geographic ties to security forces that might lead to some civilian community members benefiting more from Civ-Mil programming than others. Providing findings without understanding this stratification could inadvertently lead to uneven distribution of assistance or future internal conflict.
• Rad Resource: This AEA365 blogpost has pointers for understanding target populations in fragile contexts.

Final Lesson: Address Bias and Attribution

Methodological challenges focus on practical aspects of design, data collection, and ensuring the validity and reliability of findings.

• Civilians in Project Design: Civ-Mil projects are often intended primarily for the benefit of the military, leaving civilians as secondary beneficiaries and frequently excluding them from the project design phase. This exclusion risks creating an evaluation design that ignores potential risks to civilians.
• Hot Tip: Evaluability assessments can be key tools here to determine quality of project design and availability of civilian needs assessments.
• Perception of Donor: If civilians have a negative (or overly positive) perception of the donor, it can skew their opinion about the project and their military. This can result in a biased data sample and faulty findings.
• Counterfactual Not Possible: In conflict or complex contexts, it is typically not possible to establish a true comparison group that did not receive the intervention. Communities are often selected for political or project-related reasons, making impact evaluation difficult.

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Gov’t Eval TIG Week with our colleagues in the Government Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our Gov’t Eval TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on theAEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.