Evaluation of the results and impacts of a social-oriented technology program in Brazil: the case of Prosab (a sanitation research program)

This paper presents and discuss the main results and impacts of Prosab (a sanitation research program) sponsored by Finep (Brazilian Federal Agency of Innovation). Prosab was mainly carried out by universities and its purpose was to fulfill technological demands related to the Brazilian sanitation services. This paper deals with two important factors: evaluating a technological program with a social purpose and creating a methodology that could capture the overwhelming aspects of the program's outcomes. The evaluation methodology is separated into two fronts: results evaluation, which tries to seize all the intermediate outputs of the program; and impact evaluation, which concerns the general outcomes of the program for Brazilian society. Results evaluation focused on those who carried out the research project, using them as reference units for analyses, while the focus of impact evaluation was on the whole set of actors related to the sanitation industry, including the research community, sanitation companies, public actors at local and federal level. The unit of analysis was the program itself. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.