A core layer of the project methodology will be the deployment of two Governance Sentiment Instruments (GSI). The GSIs will utilise the VQ-SC consortium’s considerable experience in deploying local, national and global survey instruments and applying advanced data science methodologies to the data collected. The GSIs will enable the evaluation to:

Elicit the perspectives of thousands of EITI stakeholders from all 55 implementing countries, as well as ‘global’ stakeholders – e.g., researchers, civil society groups, staff in multinational corporations, staff in multilateral organisations.

Elicit the perspectives of thousands of ordinary citizens in a small selection of case study countries who – in most cases – will not be aware of the EITI, but who will have direct life experience of resource governance.

Contribute to the overall principle of an ‘open evaluation’ by having methodological instruments that have almost no barriers to entry.

Reach beyond the ‘usual experts’ that can sometimes act as gatekeepers to evaluation data. Indeed, where those experts derive income or status from the project, initiative or institution that is being evaluated, experts can sometimes downplay negative findings, impacts, or results.

Gather data through internet and phone-based surveys that in turn de-risks the potential impact of COVID to gathering evaluation data.

Generate data that is genuinely new, rather than simply synthesise existing research and data.

Provide a strong quantitative element to the overall evaluation process.

Apply smart clustering techniques to find patterns in the data that indicate psychological constructs that unify different evaluation questions.

Use artificial intelligence / machine learning to identify the top predictors of an overall evaluation question – i.e., which aspects of EITI most add or detract to views on whether the EITI is effective, relevant, impactful or sustainable.

Identify potential key indicators of EITI’s effectiveness, relevance, impact and sustainability that can be built into global and national evaluation frameworks going forward.

In addition to being a stand-alone methodology in and of itself, the two GSI instruments will also generate data that will contribute to the country and policy case studies.

The final GSI responses will be presented through online dashboards on the project website, in which clusters of questions and individual questions can be broken down by sub-groups such as by country, gender and stakeholder type