Howard White

Howard white
Designation: Director, GDN Evaluation and Evidence Synthesis Programme
Howard is the Director of the GDN Evaluation and Evidence Synthesis Programme. Formerly, he was the CEO of the Campbell Collaboration and Adjunct Professor, Alfred Deakin Research Institute, Deakin University. He is also a former executive director of 3ie.
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Blogs by author

Does development need a nudge, or a big push?

Howard White 11 December 2013 blog  

Sending people persuasive reminder letters to pay their taxes recovered ₤210 million of revenue for the UK government. Getting the long term unemployed to write about their experiences,  increased their chances of getting a job. Placing healthy choices of food –like fruit instead of chocolate- in obvious locations improves children’s eating habits.

Evidence Matters and so does blogging

Howard White 05 December 2013 blog  
3ie is not just a grant-making institution. As a knowledge broker, we promote theory-based, and policy-relevant impact evaluations and systematic reviews. Blogs are an increasingly important way that 3ie can be communicating its messages more widely.  Our methods blogs have covered the importance of mixed methods and participatory approaches, various perspectives on causal chain analysis (see here and here), and how to promote randomised control trials effectively.

How will they ever learn?

Howard White 10 September 2013 blog  

The low-quality of education in much of the developing world is no secret. The Annual status of education report (Aser), produced by the Indian NGO Pratham, has been documenting the poor state of affairs in that country for several years. The most recent report highlights the fact that more than half of grade five students can read only at grade two level. Similar statistics are available from around the world.

The importance of buy-in from key actors for impact evaluations to influence policy

Howard White 24 July 2013 blog  

At a public forum on impact evaluation a couple of years ago, Arianna Legovini, head of the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation programme (DIME), declared that ‘dissemination is dead’. But her statement does not imply that we should stop the dissemination of impact evaluation findings for influencing policy.

Tips on selling randomised controlled trials

Howard White 26 March 2013 blog  
When we randomise, we obviously don’t do it across the whole population. We randomise only across the eligible population. Conducting an RCT requires that we first define and identify the eligible population. This is a good thing. Designing an RCT can help ensure better targeting by making sure the eligible population is identified properly.