It has become increasingly important to use 'evidence-based' criteria to decide what kind of programmes work, how, for whom, in what circumstances and at what cost.
Much evidence is quantitative in nature and this course aims to enable participants to understand, critique and make effective use of such evidence.
While the course focuses on issues of attribution – tracing out cause and effect – and quantification, it is also concerned with the context, criteria and limitations of evidence-based quantitative evaluations.
The course therefore aims to address an important prerequisite for incorporating impact evaluation (IE) into programme design: a theoretical and practical understanding of IE approaches to enable selection of appropriate methodologies, coupled with careful appraisal of the resulting evidence. Thus, participants will be introduced to current quantitative as well as qualitative evaluation techniques for impact evaluation and gain critical understanding of the roles they can play in the design and assessment of public policy and development interventions.
COURSE CONTENT
Teaching will consist of interactive lectures, group discussions and several worked-through examples (which involves working in a computer lab using STATA) where participants will analyse data from established IE examples that are drawn from development literature and elsewhere.
The main areas of course content include:
– Theories and practices of evaluation in public policy
– The evaluation problem: Attribution, selection and placement biases
– Evaluation research designs
- Randomised control trials
- Quasi-experimental designs
- Qualitative evaluation designs
- Sampling and power calculation
– Econometric techniques for impact evaluation
- Revision of basic econometrics
- Instrumental variables technique
- Propensity score matching
- Regression discontinuity
- Difference-in-difference estimation
– Systematic reviews and meta-analysis in development
– Replication and research ethics.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Early and mid-level professionals, postgraduate students and academics with interests in or working with international agencies, governments, think-tanks, NGOs and other donor organisations. Anyone whose work requires them to understand the methods used in evidence-based policy making in order to evaluate and justify continued public spending on particular programmes.
THE COURSE FEE
£2,500 – includes all tuition, daily lunches and refreshments.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
The course is conducted in English. Full competence in English, written and spoken is an essential requirement.
A working knowledge of basic statistics is important
At the application stage we will provide a self-assessment test for you to judge your level of statistical skills. The course includes a brief revision of statistics up to multiple linear regression.
We can share recommended statistics readings before the start of the course.
TEACHING TEAM
This course has been developed by Dr Maren Duvendack and Dr Richard Palmer-Jones who are both development economists with extensive evaluation experience in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, especially microfinance, irrigation, agriculture and poverty reduction. Additional tutors will be drawn from the School of International Development UEA, and where possible from the Overseas Development Institute and 3ie. Regular contributors to the course include Dr Edward Anderson, Dr Paul Clist, Dr Bereket Kebede and Dr Laura Camfield.
For more information please email devco.train@uea.ac.uk or look at the UEA website.
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