Realist evaluation asks ‘how and why do interventions work or not work, for whom, and in what circumstances?’ It holds promise as an approach that can help evaluate complex programmes, and provide nuanced insights to guide decisions about rolling out, scaling up, or trying out interventions elsewhere. This CDI Practice Paper, by Melanie Punton, Isabel Vogel, Jennifer Leavy, Charles Michaelis and Edward Boydell, presents lessons from four large, multi-country realist evaluations of complex interventions conducted by Itad since 2013.
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Publications
Institute of Development Studies
Institute of Development Studies March 2020
CDI Practice Paper
This resource guide is one of a series of four developed to support researchers in international development with key monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, such as Theory of Change and logframes for proposal and project design.
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI November 2019
This resource guide is one of a series of four developed to support researchers in international development with key monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, such as Theory of Change and logframes for proposal and project design.
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI November 2019
This resource guide is one of a series of four developed to support researchers in international development with key monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, such as Theory of Change and logframes for proposal and project design. Making the most of your logical framework and indicators This resource guide will provide an introduction to: the principles of a logframe; the structure and logic of a logframe; suggestions for developing indicators; means of verification, assumptions and risks.
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI November 2019
This resource guide is one of a series of four developed to support researchers in international development with key monitoring, evaluation and learning processes, such as Theory of Change and logframes for proposal and project design.
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI
IDS , University of Edinburgh and CDI November 2019
John Mayne discusses ways of assessing the relative importance of such causal factors, while arguing that there are likely no quantitative answers to the question. Rather, there is a need to carefully articulate the relative importance question, decide which causal factors one wants to compare, and to decide how one wants to interpret ‘importance’.
Institute of Development Studies
Institute of Development Studies August 2019
CDI Practice Paper
While contribution analysis provides a step-by-step approach to verify whether and why an intervention is a contributory factor to development impact, most contribution analysis studies do not quantify the ‘share of contribution’ that can be attributed to a particular support intervention. The authors explore how contribution analysis can be stretched so that it can give some sense of the importance of a contribution in a quantitative manner.
Institute of Development Studies
Institute of Development Studies January 2019
CDI Practice Paper
Financial inclusion is presently one of the most widely recognised areas of activity in international development. Financial inclusion initiatives have built upon donors’ experience with microfinance, but have displaced and superseded microfinance interventions in recent years with a more encompassing agenda of financial services for poverty alleviation and development.
Campbell Collaboration
Campbell Collaboration January 2019
Report
Background: Mobilising investment for sustainable development is a priority for many
African governments and their international allies. There are many claims about the social
impact of investments in small and growing businesses, and yet these mostly focus on good
news stories or a narrow set of metrics (jobs created, tax revenue, etc.). There are relatively few
studies that consider the diversity of social impacts, particularly in an African context.
Objectives: The aim of this research was to work collaboratively with investors in Ghana to
November 2018
Journal
Mixed methods approaches are widely used in impact evaluations, but all too often a ‘methodological gap’ emerges between broad, large-scale surveys and in-depth, small-scale qualitative investigation that can be difficult to bridge. In this CDI Practice Paper by Jeremy Holland, Ramlatu Attah, Valentina Barca, Clare O’Brien, Simon Brook, Eleanor Fisher and Andrew Kardan, we reflect on a multi-country impact assessment of cash transfer programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Institute of Development Studies
Institute of Development Studies August 2018
CDI Practice Paper