Evaluating the Complex: Attribution, Contribution and Beyond.

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Kim Forss, Mita Marra and Robert Schwartz, editors. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick. May 2011. Available via Amazon "Problem-solving by policy initiative has come to stay. Overarching policy intiatives are now standard modus operandi for governmental and non-governmental organisations. But complex policy initiatives are not only reserved for the big challenges of ...

Assessing the impact of blogs: Some evidence and analysis

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

See The Impact of Economic Blogs - Part I: Dissemination by David McKenzie, Berk Özler, 2011-08-05. Question 1: “Do blogs lead to increased dissemination of research papers?”" Answer:  "Blogging about a paper causes a large increase in the number of abstract views and downloads in the same month. These increases are massive compared ...

DPC Policy Discussion Paper: Evaluating Influencing Strategies and Interventions

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

A paper to the DFID Development Policy Committee. Available as pdf  June 2011 Introduction "1 The Strategy Unit brief of April 2008 envisaged that DFID should become more systematic in planning and implementing influencing efforts. Since then, procedures and guidance have been developed and there is an increasingly explicit use of influencing ...

The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Original paper by Steven Teles, Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, and Mark Schmitt, Roosevelt Institute. Published with support provided by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Found courtesy of @alb202 A version of this paper was published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review  in May 2011 and is available ...

Learning how to learn: eight lessons for impact evaluations that make a difference

Friday, April 15th, 2011

ODI Background Notes, April 2011. Authors: Ben Ramalingam "This Background Note outlines key lessons on impact evaluations, utilisation-focused evaluations and evidence-based policy. While methodological pluralism is seen as the key to effective impact evaluation in development, the emphasis here is not methods per se. Instead, the focus ...

Sound expectations: from impact evaluations to policy change

Wednesday, April 13th, 2011

3ie Working paper # 12, 2011, by Center for the Implementation of Public Policies Promoting Equity and Growth (CIPPEC) Emails: vweyrauch@cippec.org, gdiazlangou@cippec.org Abstract "This paper outlines a comprehensive and flexible analytical conceptual framework to be used in the production of a case study series. The cases are expected to identify factors that ...

USAID Evaluation Policy

Thursday, March 10th, 2011

14 pages. Available as pdf. Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning , January 19th, 2011 Contents: 1. Context; 2. Purposes of Evaluation; 3. Basic Organizational Roles and Responsibilities; 4. Evaluation Practices; 5. Evaluation Requirements; 6. Conclusion. Annex: Criteria to Ensure the Quality of the Evaluation Report

Five challenges facing impact evaluation

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

[from NONIE Meeting 2011 website, posting by Howard White] "There has been enormous progress in impact evaluation of development interventions in the last five years. The 2006 CGD report When Will be Ever Learn? claimed that there was little rigorous evidence of what works in development. But ...

Learners, practitioners and teachers Handbook on monitoring, evaluating and managing knowledge for policy inluence

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

Authors: Vanesa Weyrauch, Julia D´Agostino, Clara Richards Date Published: 11 February 2011 By CIPPEC. Available as pdf Description: The evidence based policy influence is a topic of growing interest to researchers, social organizations, experts, government officials, policy research institutes and universities. However, they all admit that the path from the production of ...

A guide to monitoring and evaluating policy influence

Monday, February 7th, 2011

ODI Background Notes, February 2011. 12 pages Authors: Harry Jones "This paper provides an overview of approaches to monitoring and evaluating policy influence and is intended as a guide, outlining challenges and approaches and suggested further reading." "Summary: Influencing policy is a central part of much international development work. Donor agencies, for example, ...