Complementary monitoring is a blanket term used to describe any monitoring tool or approach beyond USAID’s standard performance and context monitoring practices. Complementary monitoring may be used in situations where results are difficult to predict due to dynamic contexts or unclear cause-and-effect relationships, or where traditional monitoring methods may not suffice.
While performance and context monitoring require a level of predictability, complementary monitoring can measure unintended results, perspectives, and a wide range of other factors that have an influence on the results we intend to achieve. Complementary monitoring includes complexity-aware monitoring approaches.