May 2010 – Monitoring and Evaluation NEWS

“Impact 2.0: Collaborative technologies connecting research and policy”

“Impact 2.0: Collaborative technologies connecting research and policy” is a two-year research project that seeks to develop a body of knowledge about the use of Web 2.0 in policy-oriented research and design in Latin America and to identify, document and promote good practices and emerging opportunities related to the use of collaborative technologies for linking research to policy.

In order to achieve this goal Impact 2.0 has two components. The first involves three pilot projects that seek to combine to combine current theory on the relationship between research, policy and advocacy with advances in Web 2.0/Social networking technologies and practices. The second is a fund to support research into the use of Web 2.0 tools and behaviours to link research and policy.

The research fund will consider two types of proposals: Type 1 projects will involve both implementing a specific intervention using Web 2.0 to link policy and analyzing, documentating and evaluating the intervention while Type 2 projects will document and evaluate one or more current or recent projects making use of Web 2.0 to link policy and research. A maximum of US$15,000 is available for Type 1 projects and US$7,500 for Type 2.

Independent researchers and organisations (universities, government agencies, NGOs, research centres) are invited to apply. Applicants must reside in Latin America and the projects to be performed and analyzed must also be located in and relevant to the region.

Full details are available in the attached CFPs or in Spanish at http://impacto2.comunica.org and in English at http://impacto2.comunica.org/?page_id=23

Impacto 2.0 is a project of Fundaciï¿½n Comunica, with the financial support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the participation of APC, DIRSI, PRODIC of the University of the Republic of Uruguay and CIESPAL.

How Wide are the Ripples?

Report of the March 2010 workshop Prepared by Louise Clark, Kate Newman and Hannah Beardon

“This report presents reflections from a workshop held in London on 18th and 19th March 2010. The workshop was part of a larger process of reflection and research, supported by IKM Emergent and called ‘How Wide Are the Ripples?’. The process explored how international development NGOs use and manage the information, knowledge and perspectives generated through the participatory processes they initiate or fund. The initial research and report built on a literature review and case studies from five international NGOs (ActionAid, Concern, Healthlink, Panos and Plan), identifying challenges and opportunities to good bottom-up information and learning flows. The workshop invited participants from the original research and others working on and around these issues to reflect further on the challenges and discuss practical solutions based on their own experiences.

Participants came from a mix of large international development NGOs, smaller organisations and included independent consultants . The variety of organisations was not only evident in their size, but also in their different structures and relationships with grassroots processes and organisations, a recurring theme throughout the discussions. The expectation, and commitment from the participants, was that these discussions and experiences would feed into a guest-edited edition of the IIED journal Participatory Learning and Action (PLA), in June 2011. The workshop was therefore organised around two main goals: improving the practice of international development NGOs in relation to information generated through participatory processes, through workshop discussions and by developing a network for support and sharing ideas; and promoting further reflection and learning around specific issues, in particular through developing articles for the edition of PLA.”

Research Integration Using Dialogue Methods

David McDonald, Gabriele Bammer, Peter Deane, 2009 Download pdf

Ed: Although about “research integration” the book is also very relevant to the planning and evaluation of development projects

“Research on real-world problems—like restoration of wetlands, the needs of the elderly, effective disaster response and the future of the airline industry—requires expert knowledge from a range of disciplines, as well as from stakeholders affected by the problem and those in a position to do something about it. This book charts new territory in taking a systematic approach to research integration using dialogue methods to bring together multiple perspectives. It links specific dialogue methods to particular research integration tasks.

Fourteen dialogue methods for research integration are classified into two groups:

1. Dialogue methods for understanding a problem broadly: integrating judgements

2. Dialogue methods for understanding particular aspects of a problem: integrating visions, world views, interests and values.

The methods are illustrated by case studies from four research areas: the environment, public health, security and technological innovation.”

Stories vs. Statistics: The Impact of Anecdotal Data on Accounting Decision Making

James Wainberg , Thomas Kida, James F. Smith
March 12, 2010 Download pdf copy

Abstract:
Prior research in psychology and communications suggests that decision makers are biased by anecdotal data, even in the presence of more informative statistical data. A bias for anecdotal data can have significant implications for accounting decision making since judgments are often made when both statistical and anecdotal data are present. We conduct experiments in two different accounting contexts (i.e., managerial accounting and auditing) to investigate whether accounting decision makers are unduly influenced by anecdotal data in the presence of superior, and contradictory, statistical data. Our results suggest that accounting decision makers ignored or underweighted statistical data in favor of anecdotal data, leading to suboptimal decisions. In addition, we investigate whether two decision aids, judgment orientation and counterargument, help to mitigate the effects of this anecdotal bias. The results indicate that both decision aids can reduce the influence of anecdotal data in accounting decision contexts. The implications of these results for decision making in accounting and auditing are discussed.