This database of publications comprises outputs from our team and partner organisations that are relevant to the areas of work in which CDI aims to be active.
December 2014
In international development there is increasing pressure to demonstrate that aid spending is making a difference. In short, that it is having an ‘impact’.
November 2014
This IDS Bulletin is the first of two special issues presenting contributions from the event ‘Impact Innovation and Learning: Towards a Research and Practice Agenda for the Future’, organised by IDS in March 2013. The initiative, as well as these two issues, represent a...
November 2014
What are the right evaluation methods and what evaluation strategy adapted to contemporary development issues should such methods serve? This article argues that a range of methods and tools must be drawn upon to achieve high-quality evaluation standards and that even t...
November 2014
This article proposes a combination of a popular evaluation approach, contribution analysis (CA), with an emerging method for causal inference, process tracing (PT). Both are grounded in generative causality and take a probabilistic approach to the interpretation of evi...
November 2014
Sustainability standards and certification schemes have been promoted as a market-driven instrument for realising development impacts and receive public funding. As a result, companies, NGOs and supporting donors and governments want to know if these ambitions have been...
November 2014
The thrust for evidence-based policymaking has paid little attention to problems of bias. Statistical evidence is more fragile than generally understood, and false positives are all too likely given the incentives of policymakers and academic and professional evaluators...
November 2014
In international development, impact evaluation (IE) is becoming more and more an institutionalised practice. This article starts out by addressing the question of what institutionalisation of IE means and how it could work. Subsequently, the article explores common cha...
November 2014
A lively methodological debate together with organisational adjustments has dominated the international discussion on development evaluation in the last decade. Less discussed have been the evaluation processes, from procurement of consultants to the completion of evalu...
November 2014
This article sets out what would be required to develop a research agenda for impact evaluation. It begins by explaining why it is needed and what process it would involve. It outlines four areas where research is needed – the enabling environment, practice, products an...
October 2014
This was an interactive workshop – supported by the Institute of Development Studies’ (IDS) Department for International Development (DFID) Accountable Grant and the University of East Anglia (UEA) – with a view to opening up the debate on ethics in impact evaluation to...
September 2014
This CDI Practice Paper is about the uses of Systemic Action Research (SAR) and Participatory Systemic Inquiry (PSI) for impact assessment.
January 2014
The short pieces in the themed debate section speak to the importance of evaluation and replication of evaluations. They can improve the quality of development policy and programmes and explain intended and unintended consequences. The pieces raise questions such as: Is...
January 2014
This CDI Practice Paper by Keetie Roelen and Stephen Devereux reflects on the methodological implications of operationalising an expanded framework for evaluating social protection programmes.