Collaborating with communities to improve vaccine coverage: a strategy worth pursuing?

Jyotsna Puri, Shagun Sabarwal 29 July 2015 blog  

It is unfortunate but distrust of vaccines remains widespread in the world today. In August 2003, a polio vaccination boycott was declared in the five northern states of Nigeria. Political and religious leaders argued that the vaccines could be contaminated with anti-fertility agents, HIV and cancer-causing agents. It took a full year to resolve the boycott but the one year period wreaked havoc on the status of polio across the world.

Replication research promotes open discourse

Benjamin DK Wood 23 July 2015 blog  

The just-released International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) suite of publications reexamining the effectiveness of deworming in Kenya demonstrates the potential impact of replication research. The headline publication is a 3ie-funded replication study.

Tackling radicalisation through sports

Howard White 13 July 2015 blog  
Ten years ago, on 7 July, four suicide bombers killed 52 people in London. This included the bombing of the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square, just yards away from the building that now houses 3ie’s London Office. Today, ten years on, in the town of Dewsbury, home to the mastermind of the 7/7 bombings, cricket is being used to combat radicalisation. The NGO Chance to Shine has put together three cricket teams for getting the youth to mix with each other.

Do communities need funds or facilitation?

Howard White 06 July 2015 blog  

A group of villages in Haryana, India came together to build a much-needed bridge to reduce travel time to the nearest town. This sounds like the sort of community initiative that donors have been supporting for more than a decade with community driven development (CDD) programmes. Except it isn’t.

Trends in impact evaluation: Did we ever learn?

Jorge Miranda , Drew Cameron 29 April 2015 blog  

In 2006, the Evaluation Gap Working Group asked, “When will we ever learn?” This week, 3ie’s Drew Cameron, Anjini Mishra, and Annette Brown (hereafter CMB) have published a paper in the Journal of Development Effectiveness that uses data on more than thirty years of published impact evaluations from 3ie’s Impact Evaluation Repository (IER) to answer the question.

On target? Why participant selection matters for development programmes

Daniel Phillips 13 April 2015 blog  

Many development programmes reach only a fraction of the people they aim to include. One reason for this is that attrition erodes target group participation at various stages between programme conception and completion. Programme targeting using selection criteria, eligibility assessment and participant registration is one of the ways this problem can be addressed. But how far does targeting address this issue?

Intergenerational transmission of attitudes towards gender equality

05 April 2015 video  

In this edition of 3ie Delhi Seminar Series, Prof. Tarun Jain, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad talks about findings from a 3ie-funded study that examines the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting where discrimination against women and girls is severe.

MDG for water: is the job done?

Hugh Waddington 26 March 2015 blog  

Water provision remains high on the global development agenda including political commitments such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and associated post-2015 targets.

Reversing the resource curse through impact evaluations

Jyotsna Puri, Francis Rathinam 19 March 2015 blog  
Countries such as Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria have large reserves of natural resources. They are also countries that have suffered extended periods of political violence, authoritarianism, corruption, inequality and poor growth. What causes this imbalance of high wealth on one side and extreme poverty on the other? The correlation between the quantity of natural resources reserves and poor economic growth is generally considered to be proof of a natural resource curse.

Not all ‘systematic’ reviews are created equal

Birte Snilstveit, Daniel Phillips, Martina Vojtkova 10 March 2015 blog  
In a recent World Bank blog based on a paper, David Evans and Anna Popova argue that systematic reviews may not be reliable as an approach to synthesis of empirical literature. They reach this conclusion after analysing six reviews assessing the effects of a range of education interventions on learning outcomes.  The main finding of their analysis: While all these reviews focus on the effects of learning outcomes based on evidence from impact evaluations, there is a large degree of divergence in the studies included in each review, and consequently the conclusions they reach.
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