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.
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...
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...