Using impact evaluation to improve policies and programmes

Howard White
26 December 2012 blog  
Community-level water supply does not have health benefits. There is emerging evidence that community-driven development programmes do not increase social cohesion. These statements can be made with confidence based on the considerable body of evidence from impact evaluations undertaken to answer the question of what works in development. 3ie is now adding this body of evidence as more completed studies are becoming available.

How useful are systematic reviews in international development?

Martina Vojtkova
13 December 2012 blog  
Systematic reviews summarise all the evidence on a particular intervention or programme and were first developed in the health sector.  The health reviews have a specific audience: doctors, nurses and health practitioners. The audience is also easily able to find the systematic reviews. But there seems to be a big difference in the accessibility of evidence between the health and development sectors.

Special feature for World AIDS Day 2012

Eric Djimeu
30 November 2012 blog  

There has been only a small decline in the prevalence of HIV in the last decade, dropping from 5.9 percent to 5 percent between 2001 and 2009 for those aged 15-49 (UNAIDS, 2010). This decrease, whilst important, does not seem impressive compared to over US$5 billion spent fighting AIDS in low and middle income countries each year (the latest available figure is US$5.1 billion in 2008).

Field notes on implementing impact evaluations

Radhika Menon
11 November 2012 blog  

3ie is currently funding 100 impact evaluations in low and middle-income countries spread across Africa, Asia and Latin America. We are now in a unique position to learn a lot about what’s working well in designing and conducting impact evaluations and what can be done better to ensure that research produces reliable and actionable findings.

Early stimulation and micronutrients interventions

Christelle Chapoy
07 September 2012 blog  

Why should we put more money into early childhood development interventions? Does this help children in secondary education? Should we invest in preschool programmes or more in home stimulation or parenting classes? What is most cost-effective?  These are key questions that policymakers are grappling with at a time when early childhood development is emerging as a priority issue for many developing countries.

Can we do small n impact evaluations?

Howard White
28 August 2012 blog  
3ie was set up to fill ‘the evaluation gap’, the lack of evidence about ‘what works in development’. Our founding document stated that 3ie will be issues-led, not methods led, seeking the best available method to answer the evaluation question at hand. We have remained true to this vision in that we have already funded close to 100 studies in over 30 countries around the world.

Exercising credibility: why a theory of change matters

Howard White
28 August 2012 blog  
The strength of randomized control trials (RCTS), like this study, is their ability to establish causal relationships between the intervention and the outcome. But we need factual analysis of what happened, to help complement the counterfactual analysis of causality. In the case of this study, participants should have been asked to keep food and exercise diaries.

Evaluating the impact of stimulation and micronutrients on early childhood development

21 July 2012 blog  
The preliminary results and analysis of this study was presented at the Promises for Preschoolers: Early Childhood Development and Human Capital Accumulation conference on 25 June in London. We designed, implemented and tested a programme in Colombia with the explicit aim of offering a blueprint for such a scalable intervention.  We wanted to address these challenges as well as generate data that allowed us to learn in a deeper and more scientific fashion.

Evidence to policy: bridging gaps and reducing divides

Birte Snilstveit
12 June 2012 blog  
Evidence-based policy-making is important but not always straightforward in practice. The complex reality of policy-making processes means that the availability of high quality research is a necessary, but not sufficient, ingredient for evidence informed policy.

Evaluating vocational schools in rural China

James Chu
05 April 2012 blog  
Vocational schools are increasingly viewed as an appealing alternative to academic high schools in rural China. In recent years, the Chinese government—at both the local and national levels—has been encouraging students like Kou Yaokang to attend vocational schools. Shaanxi Province has invested US$ 80 million in vocational education in 2010.The central government gives a subsidy of US$ 250 per year for each student enrolled in a vocational school.