EvalCompassEvalCompass
Participatory & qualitative approachesParticipatoryStoriesUnderstanding changeMonitoringLearning

Most Significant Change

Most Significant Change
Also known as: MSC、Most significant change

Collects stories of change, selects those considered important with reasons, and enables stakeholder learning. Selection and feedback are essential stages. [1]

MSC story collection and selection worksheet — openReferences and checked sections
Difficulty
Intermediate
Cost
Medium
Duration
Illustrative estimate, adjusted to scale and staffing: 1–2 weeks collecting stories plus half a day–1 day for selection meetings, repeated in cycles
Content updated: 2026-09-13Source checked: 2026-09-13 (includes AI cross-checking)No documented human reviewIncludes fictional examples

How it works at a glance

MSC records changes experienced by participants or field staff and why they consider them important. Stakeholders compare stories and discuss what they regard as valuable change. [1]

Record selection reasons, return them to storytellers and check facts where needed. Stories do not establish average change or prevalence among everyone; they support learning about differing values and pathways of change. [1]

Community / participantsStories: 9Program teamStories: 5Steering committeeStories: 3Most significant changeStories: 1Collect many stories of change →Discussing why stories were selected makes values visible
A participatory method that collects stories of change from the field and uses dialogue at successive levels to select the most significant changes.

When to use it and when it is unsuitable

When to use it

  • When exploring unanticipated changes or unintended influences on a program
  • When beneficiaries, implementers and funders want to discuss and align what they value in outcomes
  • When recording behavioral, attitudinal or relationship changes not fully captured by quantitative indicators
  • When actively involving field staff and beneficiaries in monitoring

When it is unsuitable

  • When regulators or funders demand strict accountability using measurable indicators
  • When exceptionally busy field staff have no time to collect and communicate stories

Participants, roles, and deliverables

Participants and roles

Beneficiaries and community members as storytellers; field staff collecting and selecting at the first level; program managers and senior decision-makers selecting at higher levels. Use 2–4 levels according to organizational scale.

Main deliverables

  • Story collection by domain
  • Selected stories and reasons at each level
  • Learning summary for each cycle

Implementation steps

  1. Define domains of change
    Agree with stakeholders which domains of change to discuss. Leave room to record unexpected changes outside these domains.
  2. Prepare story forms and training
    Include the standard question “What was the most significant change you witnessed during the reporting period, and why was it significant?” Train field staff on collection purposes, recording methods and ethical considerations such as anonymization.
  3. Collect stories in the field
    Field staff regularly interview beneficiaries and community members, for example monthly, and record stories by domain. Encourage inclusion of who did what, what changed and why it matters.
  4. First-level selection meeting: field team
    Discuss which collected stories are most significant and record choices, reasons and differing views. Adapt selection counts and levels to intended use.
  5. Selection and discussion at higher levels
    Pass field-selected stories to program managers and then decision-makers, repeating selection and recording reasons at each level. Differences in reasons reveal differences in values.
  6. Provide feedback and inform the next cycle
    Return choices and reasons to storytellers and stakeholders. Check important facts as needed, retain unselected experiences, and use them in subsequent collection and improvement.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

  • Discovers unintended outcomes and secondary changes not specified in advance.
  • Makes organizational values about outcomes explicit through selection.
  • Enables field staff to participate actively in evaluation and contributes to motivation.
  • Provides an organizational mechanism to accumulate and share qualitative evidence.

Limitations

  • Stories are vulnerable to conscious or unconscious selection bias; easily told success stories tend to dominate.
  • Cannot demonstrate causal attribution, whether changes resulted from the program.
  • Significant change stories alone do not reveal how many people in the population experienced change. Combine other information where needed.
  • Managing cycles across domains and levels is costly.

Common pitfalls

  • Often confused with the most important success story. Without explicitly including failures and unexpected adverse effects, only success stories accumulate.
  • Omitting feedback eliminates field learning and reduces the process to mere reporting.
  • Recording only selected stories without reasons loses the greatest value of the dialogue.

Conditions of use and evidence

  • Go beyond collecting stories to record selection reasons, provide feedback to storytellers and verify content. [1]
Fictional example; not actual results

Select changes considered important in the community space

A fictional illustrative example. Participants in a youth community space recount a month's experiences, and the operations team discusses significant changes.

Storyteller: role / characteristicsChange: what changed?Background and process of changeWhy did this feel most significant?
Participant ARealized it was acceptable to stay without speakingStaff did not demand speech and offered a quiet seat.Could stay without forcing themselves to fit in with others
Participant BFound it difficult to decline invitationsWas asked to respond to weekly invitationsRealized the space could also feel burdensome

Common errors in judgment

Common mistake

Assuming collecting moving success stories constitutes MSC

How to revise

Plan selection dialogue, reasons and feedback.

ReasonThe central process is learning what is valued.

Common mistake

Treating 1 story as outcomes for all participants

How to revise

Specify the storyteller's experience and scope of selection.

ReasonThis sampling does not guarantee representativeness.

Organize your thinking by writing

MSC story collection and selection worksheet

A practical template is available to fill in and print on A4 paper.

Open worksheet

Related practical guides

Evaluating nonprofit and grant-funded programs

Related methods

Outcome HarvestingOutcome MappingAppreciative InquiryCase StudyDevelopmental Evaluation

References and checked sections

  1. Most significant change
    BetterEvaluation
    Section consulted
    Overview; Steps 4–7
    How it relates to the text
    Go beyond collecting stories to record selection reasons, provide feedback to storytellers and verify content.
    Source checked: (includes AI cross-checking)

Editorial and checking information

Content updated: Source checked: (includes AI cross-checking)No documented human reviewIncludes fictional examplesEditorial policy and scope of checkingCite this pageReport a correction

How to cite this page

EvalCompass Editorial Team. “Most Significant Change”. EvalCompass, updated 2026-09-13. https://evalcompass.jun-nakatani.com/en/methods/msc/
Add the date you accessed the page. Text created by this site is available under CC BY 4.0. Quotations, external materials, and bundled fonts have their own terms of use. When reusing content, credit the source, link to the license, and indicate any changes.

Suggest a correction or improvement to this page

Change history
  • — Updated explanations to correspond with sources, and added method-specific fictional worksheet examples, judgment examples and revision history.