Blogs

A randomised controlled trial (RCT) in a Northern district of Uganda finds that the young adults who receive cash transfers use it to buy more food for their families, football shirts, and airtime for their mobile phones, compared to those in control areas. Would the pattern be the same if young adults in central Uganda are given cash transfers? Would the findings replicate if the cash transfers were given to young women in Senegal? This stylised example points to the crucial question of generalisability of program impacts to other contexts – commonly referred to as external validity.

There has been a fair bit of hoopla around India being declared open defecation free last month.  In the media debates, the measurement of India’s open defecation-free status has come under a good deal of scrutiny. Leaving aside the politics of the debate, there remains an important question: how can latrine use be measured rigorously?

When 3ie set up the Innovations in Increasing Immunisation Evidence Programme, we realised early on that we had to walk the talk. The evidence programme funded formative and impact evaluations of community-based approaches for boosting coverage in countries with low or stagnating immunisation rates. But community members and local decision makers had not been figuring prominently in our approach to how our grantees engage with stakeholders.