Desk review

Before a social impact assessor ever visits a project site, there is a stack of paper — or files — already sitting in the organisation's own records. Working through that stack first is the desk review.

Every case study in the workbook's Chapter 8 begins its evaluation with one. The workbook's own words, from the IWMP case study: "A desk review of existing documents was conducted to gain further insight into the evaluation procedure and impact assessment."

It is always the first step, ahead of physical inspection and personal interviews — the workbook's case studies are consistent about this ordering across water, education, health and housing projects alike.

The desk review draws on the organisation's own secondary sources — documents it already holds, rather than new data collected in the field. The workbook's IWMP case study lists exactly what kind of documents count:

• Reports generated under environment protection laws
• Annual reports
• Sustainable development curriculum materials
• Feedback forms from staff and trainees
• Photographs of activities carried out
• Data on improved soil fertility, rainfall and agricultural productivity
• Plans and programmes held, and planned for the future
• The organisation's own policy documents (in this case, its Water Conservation Management Policy)

Once the desk review is complete, the workbook moves to physical inspection (checking dams, borewells, farm ponds and pipelines directly) and personal interviews with selected stakeholders — the desk review sets up the questions these later steps are designed to answer, rather than replacing them.

AB Responsible Services, an NPO running the Integrated Water Management Project across 18 villages in Ratnagiri and Raigad, with a population of 25,000 and a total investment of ₹45.3 lakh, is assessed by a social impact assessor who begins with a desk review of the organisation's environment-law reports, annual reports, water-conservation policy and photographs of the check dams and farm ponds already built.

Only after this desk review does the assessor move to physical inspection of the check dams and borewells, and to fieldwork — 20 focus group discussions, 10 key informant interviews and 500 quantitative surveys with a 5% sample of direct beneficiaries across the 18 villages.

The desk review does not replace this fieldwork. It gives the assessor context — for instance, knowing from the Water Conservation Management Policy what the project's own stated targets were — so the physical inspection and interviews that follow can be designed to actually test whether those targets were met.

Chapter 8 (Social Impact Assessment Case Studies), section 1.30 of each worked case study, opens the evaluation methodology with a desk review before physical inspection and interviews. Expect a question on the correct sequencing of assessment steps (desk review first) and on what kind of sources a desk review draws on (existing organisational documents, not new field data).

• Desk review always comes first, before physical inspection and interviews, in every case study in this chapter — a question on assessment sequencing is testing exactly this order.
• Desk review uses secondary sources — the organisation's own existing documents — not primary data collected fresh from stakeholders, which belongs to the interview and survey stages.
• A desk review is not a substitute for physical inspection. The workbook explicitly treats them as separate, sequential steps — a desk review alone would not confirm whether, for instance, a check dam was actually built to specification.
• Do not confuse desk review with the engagement file, which is the assessor's own documentation of the engagement — a desk review examines the client's documents; the engagement file records the assessor's work.