ADB's Independent Evaluation Department helps ADB become a learning organization that continuously improves its development effectiveness and is accountable to its stakeholders. Strategic principles give context and coherence to action, and frame the generation and appraisal of alternative options.

• Evaluations should contribute to the accomplishment of ADB's mission. ADB's mission is to help developing member countries reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of their citizens. Evaluations should advance the design and implementation of ADB's policies, strategies, and operations with respect to relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability.
• The decision to evaluate should be strategic. Evaluations should be designed to lead to action and contribute to effective decision making at all levels. Selectivity in determining what policies, strategies, and operations are to be assessed at what time will condition evaluations to provide useful findings and recommendations and help ADB to manage risks and achieve development results.
• Evaluations should enlist the participation of users. To be useful, evaluations need to produce relevant, action-oriented findings. Usefulness is fostered by sustained interaction with users throughout the evaluation process.
• Evaluations should be an asset to users. Users should benefit from the process of evaluation and should have a substantial role in drawing up the evaluation agenda. Evaluations can impose a time and resource burden on users, and their participation should not be taken for granted.
• The process of evaluation should develop capacity in evaluative thinking and evaluation use. The process of evaluation can increase an organization's ability to be clear and specific about its objectives and to learn and apply lessons. Evaluations should increase the capacities of participants and their comfort with the process of evaluation.
• Evaluative thinking should add value from the outset of operations. Evaluative thinking can make the design and implementation of policies, strategies, and operations more effective by clarifying the results to be achieved, the strategies that will contribute to their accomplishment, and the milestones that will demonstrate progress.
• Evaluations should test the validity of conventional wisdom about development practice. Demonstrating how and why change happens where it matters most, namely in improving the lives of the poor, calls for regular testing of the accuracy of our development hypotheses. The process of evaluation, which demonstrates concern for accountability, transparency, and improved performance, can help us to learn from past experience to enhance ongoing and future operations.
• Evaluations should meet quality standards. To ensure the validity of findings from operations evaluation and the reasonableness of recommendations, accepted social science research methods and procedures should be followed. The quality of evaluations will be assessed against four internationally accepted standards: utility, feasibility, propriety, and accuracy.