Imagine two government programs—a job training program and a job matching program—that perform equally well in terms of boosting employment outcomes. Now think about which is more cost-effective. If your answer is ‘no idea’ you’re not alone! Most of the time, we don’t have the cost evidence available to discern this important difference.

Over 200 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance across the world today.  In 2017, the UN-coordinated appeals reported a shortfall of 41 per cent, despite receiving a record amount of funding. As the demands on these limited funds increase, there is a concurrent increase in the need for high-quality evidence on the most effective ways to improve humanitarian programming.

Impact evaluation evidence continues to accumulate, and policymakers need to understand the range of evidence, not just individual studies. Across all sectors of international development, systematic reviews and meta-analysis (the statistical analysis used in many systematic reviews) are increasingly used to synthesise the evidence on the effects of programmes.

Anyone who has ever applied for a grant from 3ie knows that we care about theory of change. Many others in development care about theory of change as well. Craig Valters of the Overseas Development Institute explains that development professionals are using the term theory of change in three ways: for discourse, as a tool, and as an approach.

The 2015 Year of Evaluation has now come and gone. There were many noteworthy events (more than 80 conferences, workshops, seminars and the like, according to some accounts), most of which focused on the needs in developing countries. Participants included some of the best known from the evaluation community across the public or non-government sectors. However, the interesting question raised in these events was, Where was the private sector?