Evaluations should be participatory at all stages of design, data collection and analysis. Involving resource users/rights holders and stakeholders in the evaluation is crucial because they may be interested in questions that differ from fisheries co-management leaders or government, they are likely to be directly affected by any actions that the evaluation results may lead to, and they have information that no one else might have. At a minimum, the co-managers, representing user groups, the fishing community and government, of the fisheries co-management system should be involved in the evaluation, as well as woman, youth and indigenous people. It may be necessary to build the capacity of stakeholders to participate in the evaluation and resources will need to be allocated to develop this capacity. 

While key stakeholders should be appropriately involved throughout the evaluation process, a specific activity on validation of the preliminary results of the evaluation needs to be planned for. This validation process could also involve an external review in addition to an internal one by primary stakeholders. This is further discussed in Task 5 under Step 3.