Impact evaluation evidence continues to accumulate, and policymakers need to understand the range of evidence, not just individual studies. Across all sectors of international development, systematic reviews and meta-analysis (the statistical analysis used in many systematic reviews) are increasingly used to synthesise the evidence on the effects of programmes.
At the recently concluded What Works Global Summit (WWGS) which 3ie co-sponsored, a significant number of the sessions featured presentations on new impact evaluations and systematic reviews. WWGS was a perfect opportunity to learn lessons about the demand for and supply of high-quality evidence for decision-making because it brought together a diverse set of stakeholders. There were donors, knowledge intermediaries, policymakers, programme managers, researchers and service providers.
Since 2014, 3ie’s impact evaluation repository (IER) has been a comprehensive database of published impact evaluations of development programmes in low- and middle-income countries. We call the database comprehensive because we build it from a systematic search and screening process that covers over 35 indexes and websites and screens for all development programme evaluations or experiments that use a counterfactual method for estimating net impact.
In June this year, 3ie and the International Fund for Agricultural Development organised a workshop where we had several productive discussions around two key questions: Are impact evaluations answering policy-relevant questions and generating useful evidence? What are the challenges faced in designing and implementing impact evaluations of cash transfers and agricultural innovation programmes?
Many consider pure replication, where the replication researcher starts with the original data set and writes code to recreate the published results according to the methods described in the publication, to be the second step in replication analysis. So, what is the first?
In 2014, global humanitarian assistance totalled US$24.5 billion. The World Humanitarian Assistance Report (2015) noted that there was still a shortfall of 38 per cent in terms of unmet need. The UN Secretary General’s new report for the World Humanitarian Summit, finds that this gap has increased to 47 per cent. Put another way, humanitarian assistance needs to double to meet current needs.
Anyone who has ever applied for a grant from 3ie knows that we care about theory of change. Many others in development care about theory of change as well. Craig Valters of the Overseas Development Institute explains that development professionals are using the term theory of change in three ways: for discourse, as a tool, and as an approach.
In early 2016, 193 governments across the world put together a to-do list that would intimidate even the most workaholic overachiever: wipe out poverty, fight inequality and tackle climate change over the next 15 years.
The hip word in development research these days is scale. For many, the goal of experimenting has become to quickly learn what works and then scale up those things that do. It is so popular to talk about scaling up these days that some have started using upscale as a verb, which might seem a bit awkward to those who live in upscale neighbourhoods or own upscale boutiques.
Creating 3ie was the outcome of the Evaluation Gap Working Groupthat we led along with Nancy Birdsall to address the limited number of rigorous impact evaluation of public policies in developing countries. As CGD celebrates its 15th year, it is worth considering what made that working group so successful, the obstacles we confronted, and the work that still remains to be done.
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