Evidence Dialogues | Doing the right thing right: how to ensure development research complies with transparency, reproducibility, and ethical standards

As part of our efforts to continue our mission to address these issues, we are launching a new special issue of 3ie's Journal of Development Effectiveness (JDEff) on Transparent, Reproducible and Ethical Evidence. 3ie has been promoting the publication of high-quality research to improve the process of evidence generation and rigor of impact evaluation studies through the JDEff. This special issue highlights 3ie’s commitment to advancing transparency and ethics in evidence generation, ensuring that policies affecting millions are informed by reliable, ethical research for poverty alleviation. 

This Evidence Dialogues webinar will feature presentations by the authors of the papers included in the special issue.In addition, it will also cover a discussion about the journal’s recent policy on authorship, ethics, and transparency. We hope that those in evidence generation and practitioners in the field of development research will find the evidence dialogue insightful and useful for their own research.  

Time: 7:00-8:30 PM IST / 1:30-3:00 PM GMT / 8:30-10:00 AM EDT

Moderators:

• Marie Gaarder, Executive Director, 3ie
• Sudhanshu Handa, Distinguished Professor, University of North Carolina 

Agenda

• Introduction and overview of the TREE special issue, including a brief about 3ie’s TREE initiative, and JDEff's recent policy on authorship, ethics and transparency - Marie Gaarder and Ashu Handa 
• Research presentations by the authors
  • David Evans, Principal Economic Advisor for Social Sector, IADB on ‘Towards improved and more transparent ethics in randomized controlled trials in development social science’  
  • Douglas MacKay, Associate Professor, Public Policy, UNC on ‘Policy equipoise and interventional superiority’
  • Sridevi K. Prasad, Graduate Research Assistant, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University on ‘A checklist to guide sensitivity analyses and replications of impact evaluations’ 
  • Indira Patil, Purdue University on ‘Surveyor physical and emotional well-being: learning from Indian context’ 
  • Chandan Jain, Senior Evaluation Specialist, 3ie on ‘Introduction to the TREE Review Framework’ 
• Q&A session

Speakers

David Evans

David Evans is the Principal Economic Advisor for the Social Sector at the Inter-American Development Bank. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, working on education, health, and social safety nets, and a lead economist at the World Bank, where he co-authored the World Development Report 2018, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, coordinated impact evaluation work for sub-Saharan Africa, and managed education projects in Brazil. Evans has evaluated education, early child development, agriculture, health, and social safety net programs in Brazil, the Gambia, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania. He received a PhD in Economics from Harvard University, specializing in economic development and labor economics. 

Douglas Mackay

Douglas MacKay holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto. Prior to joining the Department of Public Policy on July 1, 2013, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. He is a Canadian citizen and grew up in northern British Columbia.MacKay’s research and teaching interests concern questions at the intersection of justice and public policy. He is currently working on projects concerning the justice of economic inequality – both domestic and global, the ethics of immigration policy, priority setting in health care, the ethics of international clinical research, and justice in the division of responsibilities within federal systems of government. 

Marie Gaarder

Dr Marie Gaarder is the executive director of 3ie, leading the organisation’s efforts to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries by supporting the generation and effective use of high-quality and relevant evidence to inform decision-making. Marie has over 25 years of experience managing operational and research projects with a development focus. In her previous role in 3ie, as director for evaluation and global director for innovation and country engagement, Marie provided strategic direction and guidance to 3ie’s work in evaluation and synthesis. Prior to joining 3ie, she was a manager in the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group, overseeing thematic, sector, corporate and project evaluations. She has also worked as the director of the evaluation department at the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, where she was in charge of independent evaluation of programmes and activities financed over the Norwegian aid budget.

Sudhanshu Handa

Sudhanshu Handa is a 3ie senior research fellow and Kenan Eminent Professor of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A trained economist, Ashu is one of the principal investigators of The Transfer Project, an initiative in partnership with UNICEF and FAO to document the wide-ranging impacts of government sponsored cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the Transfer Project and its collaborators, he has lead seven large-scale evaluations of national cash transfer programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current work involves long-term follow-ups of these evaluations to understand the intergenerational effects of cash transfers on the adult children of the original recipients. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Toronto. 

Sridevi K Prasad

Sridevi Prasad is a PhD student at the Emory University. Formerly, she was working as a Senior Research Associate at 3ie. Sridevi provided technical support to several programs across 3ie’s offices. She led 3ie’s Virtual Trainings Initiative, which seeks to develop capacity building resources in impact evaluation methodology for researchers and policymakers. Sridevi also led evidence mapping research on the associations between water, sanitation, and hygiene achievements and higher-level outcomes related to prosperity, stability and resilience for USAID’s Center for Water Security, Sanitation, and Hygiene.

Indira Patil

Indira Patil is a doctoral student at the Department of Political Science, and a researcher at the Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) at Purdue University. She majored in public policy and had a minor in research methodology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of technology policy and ethics and is particularly interested in understanding the implications of AI policy and governance on equity and ethics. Other interests include educational inequity, and research transparency and ethics. She has professional experience in public policy and previously worked with the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) where she was involved in impact evaluation and process evaluation of different government and NGO programs.

Chandan Jain

Chandan manages and supports 3ie’s livelihoods programs, including the impact evaluation of India's National Rural Livelihoods Mission, evaluation of the H&M Foundation’s Collective Impact Initiative in Bengaluru and the Swashakt program focusing on empowering Indian women’s collectives. Chandan has significant research experience in social policy, gender, and adolescent development and his work at 3ie focuses on providing technical and management lead to the ongoing impact evaluation under the 3ie’s livelihoods programs. He also manages 3ie’s initiative on Transparency, Reproducibility, and Ethical Evidence (TREE).