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.
March 2020
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 try...
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.
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 f...
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.
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.
August 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 fact...
January 2019
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 Financial inclusion initiatives have built upon donors’ experience with microfinance, but have displaced and superseded microfinance interventions in recen...
January 2019
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 s...
November 2018
Background: Mobilising investment for sustainable development is a priority for manyAfrican governments and their international allies. There are many claims about the socialimpact of investments in small and growing businesses, and yet these mostly focus on goodnews st...
August 2018
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...
February 2017
This report highlights the paradox within impact investing: the prioritisation of ‘social impact’ without prioritising ‘impact evidence’.
November 2016
This report explains the methodology used to analyse the demand for evidence and accountability within the impact investment market.
October 2016
Impact investing – investing for social and environmental returns alongside financial returns – is a growing phenomenon in financial markets. However, concerns exist regarding the demand for robust impact evidence and accountability for impact claims when compared to a...
July 2016
This panel discussion is supported by the Institute of Development Studies' Department for International Development Accountable Grant, with a view to continue a dialogue around the use and application of ethics in impact evaluation.The event was hosted by the Centre fo...
April 2016
Realist evaluation provides valuable insights into how and why programmes lead to change, and can generate transferable lessons to help practitioners roll out or scale up an intervention. However, as yet there are few standards and guidelines governing what counts as a...
March 2016
This CDI Practice Paper by Richard Longhurst, Peter Wichmand and Burt Perrin discusses how evaluability assessments (EAs) can support the choice of evaluation approaches for determining impact, drawing on recent experiences of the International Programme on the Eliminat...
February 2016
This paper by Adinda Van Hemelrijck and Irene Guijt explores how impact evaluation can live up to standards broader than statistical rigour in ways that address challenges of complexity and enable stakeholders to engage meaningfully.
February 2016
There is widespread recognition that mixed-methods approaches are a ‘platinum standard’ in research and evaluation and that the expanding availability of secondary quantitative data creates unprecedented opportunities for studying poverty and evaluating poverty reductio...
February 2016
This CDI Practice Paper by Pauline Oosterhoff, Sowmyaa Bharadwaj, Danny Burns, Aruna Mohan Raj, Rituu B. Nanda and Pradeep Narayanan reflects on the use of participatory statistics to assess the impact of interventions to eradicate slavery and bonded labour.
January 2016
A heightened focus on demonstrating development results has increased the stakes for evaluating impact (Stern 2015), while the more complex objectives and designs of international aid programmes make it ever more challenging to attribute effects to a particular interven...
January 2016
‘Impact’ in impact investing has been touted as bringing a new dimension to investing, going beyond investment’s traditional ‘risk’ and ‘return’ dimensions, and even becoming a new paradigm in solving society’s problems (Social Impact Investment Taskforce 2014a).
August 2015
As part of the International Year of Evaluation 2015, this Wilton Park convened meeting gave evaluation professionals, development partners, and investors an open forum to review recent evaluation experience, debate evaluation governance issues, and probe the methodolog...
July 2015
This background paper is a summary of literature reviewed on the topic of the evaluation of impact investments, and was prepared for the "New Frontiers for Evaluation in an Era of Market-Oriented Development" Conference, 20-23 July 2015. The literature was scoped using...
July 2015
This background paper, written by Robert Picciotto, was produced for the "New Frontiers for Evaluation in an Era of Market-Oriented Development" Conference, 20-23 July 2015.
June 2015
This workshop was supported by the Institute of Development Studies’ (IDS’) Department for International Development (DFID) Accountable Grant, with a view to start a dialogue around the use and application of ethics in impact evaluation.
June 2015
This background report supported an event hosted in January 2015 by the Centre for Development Impact (CDI) – a joint initiative between the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Itad and the University of East Anglia (UEA) – with the objective of opening up the debat...
April 2015
This CDI Practice Paper by Giulia Mascagni provides a critical assessment of the literature on tax experiments to date.It examines the main conceptual, methodological and data-related challenges, and provides practical reflections on how to move forward in low- and midd...
March 2015
With the increase in resources that organisations are dedicating to evaluation the issue of evaluation quality has risen up the agenda and a growing number of commissioners are now looking at how to ensure the studies they commission are of sufficient quality.
March 2015
This CDI Practice Paper by Melanie Punton and Katharina Welle explains the methodological and theoretical foundations of process tracing, and discusses its potential application in international development impact evaluations.
March 2015
This CDI Practice Paper by Julian Barr and Angela Christie brings together recent work at Itad to examine the origins of the concept of value for money (VFM) in the performance audit of public expenditure and its increasing prominence as a tool applied to support the ma...
January 2015
This IDS Bulletin is the second of two that follow an Institute of Development Studies event seeking to define an agenda for research and practice of development impact evaluation. It focuses on exploring the potential of systems ideas and complexity concepts to meet th...
January 2015
All evaluation approaches have to address questions about their legitimacy, validity, relevance and usefulness. As the complexity of interventions is more widely acknowledged, impact evaluation appears to be especially vulnerable to these challenges. This article explor...
January 2015
The three core systems concepts – interrelationships, perspectives and boundaries – can be used for framing an impact evaluation (see Williams, this IDS Bulletin). But their use also has implications for the type of learning that an impact evaluation is likely to genera...
Going Beyond Mixed Methods to Mixed Approaches: A Systems Perspective for Asking the Right Questions
January 2015
An impact evaluation's primary task is to determine which impacts were caused by an intervention, distinguishing them from those produced by other causes. However, in complex systems, interventions may contribute towards less apparent forms of impact (such as negative,...
January 2015
The complexity of development processes makes it difficult to observe and interpret the impacts of policies. The authors demonstrate the use and benefits of system dynamics modelling (SDM) in impact evaluation of private sector development programmes. A system dynamics...
January 2015
System dynamics modelling (SDM) was used and process researched as a case to investigate its utility as a systems-based evaluation (SBE) approach. A system dynamics (SD) model1 was developed to evaluate the potential requirements and implications on the health systems o...
January 2015
Ideas from complexity science and systems thinking are demonstrably helpful in a shift from exploring (systematic) linear net effects of an intervention towards exploring wider (systemic) effects occurring elsewhere. But where these ideas of ‘impact’ are coupled with a...
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...