For 3ie, building the capacity to conduct a rigorous and influential impact evaluation is crucial for achieving the goal of better development outcomes and more effective policies.

Here you will find a collection of useful reference materials, tool-kits, downloadable documents and other resources related to methodology and best practice in impact evaluation.

Books, Manual and Reports

• Carolyn Heinrich, Alessandro Maffioli, Gonzalo Vázquez (2010), 'A Primer for Applying Propensity Score Matching', Inter-American Development Bank

• López-Acevedo et al., (2011) Editors 'Impact Evaluation of Small and Medium Enterprise Programs in Latin America and the Caribbean', World Bank

• CGD Evaluation Gap Working Group (2006), 'When will we ever learn?', Centre for Global Development, USA   

• Judy Baker (2000), 'Evaluating the Impact of Development Projects on Poverty: A Handbook for Practitioners',World Bank, Washington, USA

• Alejandro R. Jadad and Murray W. Enkin (2007), 'Randomized Control Trials: Question, Answers and Musings' 2nd Edition, BMJ Books

• Jason Osborne (editor) (2008), 'Best Practices in Quantitative Methods', SAGE Publications  

• Rebekka E. Grun (2006), ' Monitoring and Evaluating Projects: A step-by-step Primer on Monitoring, Benchmarking, and Impact Evaluation', Health, Nutrition and Population Discussion Paper, World Bank, USA

• Paul Gertler et al., (2010), 'Impact Evaluation in Practice', World Bank, USA

• Joshua Angrist and Jorn-Steffen Pischke (2009), 'Mostly Harmless Econometrics', Princeton University Press

• Ben Goldacre (2009), 'Bad Science', Harper Perennial

• Independent Evaluation Group (2011), Writing terms of reference for an evaluation: A how-to guide, World Bank, USA

• William Greene, ‘Econometric Analysis’, 5th edition, Princeton hall business publishing

• Shahidur Khandker et al., (2009) ‘Handbook on impact evaluation: quantitative methods and practices’, World Bank, USA

Journals

• American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

• Journal of Development Effectiveness

• Special issue of IDS Bulletin on impact evaluation

• GDN British Library for Development Studies research papers delivery service: Over 1000 journals, 4000 serials and 80,000 monographs on economic and social change in developing countries available for research institutes in the South.

Papers

• David S. Lee and Thomas Lemieux 'Regression Discontinuity Designs in Economics', Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. XLVIII (June 2010)

• Michael Bamberger (2006) 'Conducting Quality Impact Evaluations Under Time and Budget Constraints', World Bank, Washington USA. 

• Martin Ravallion (1999) 'The mystery of the vanashing benefits: Ms Speedy Analyst's introduction to evaluation', Policy Research Working Paper 2153, World Bank, Washington, USA

• Martin Ravallion (2008) 'Evaluating Anti-Poverty Programs', Handbook of Development Economics, Volume 4 ( 395.08 KB)

• Martin Ravallion (2008) 'Evaluation in the Practice of Development', Policy Research Working Paper 4547, World Bank, Washington, USA ( 147.45 KB)

• Howard White (2006) 'Impact Evaluation: the experience of the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group'

• Howard White (2007) 'Evaluating Aid Impact', Research Paper No. 2007/75, UNU-WIDER    

• Nicola Jones et al (2009) 'Improving Impact Evaluation Production and Use', ODI Working Paper 300

• Dani Rodrik (2008) "The New Development Economics: We Shall Experiment, But How Shall We Learn?" HKS Working Paper No. RWP08-055

• Christopher Barrett and Michael Carter (2010) 'The Power and Pitfalls of Experiments in Development Economics: Some Non-random Reflections', Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Volume 32, Number 4, p 515-548

• Paul Rosenbaum and Donald Rubin (1983) ‘The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects’, Biometrika, Volume 70, No 1, pp 41-55

• Alberto Abadie, Guido Imbens (2009) ‘Matching on the Estimated Propensity Score’, NBER Working Paper No. w15301

• Joshua Angrist, Guido Imbens (1996), Donald Rubin ‘Identification of Causal Effects Using Instrumental Variables’,Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 91, No. 434

• Angus Deaton (2009) "Instruments of development: Randomization in the tropics, and the search for the elusive keys to economic development" Working Paper 1122, Princeton University

Thematic resources

• Climate change evaluation: Rob D. van den Berg (2010) 'supporting evaluation capacity on environment and development', forthcoming IDEAS publication "Influencing Change: Evaluation and Capacity Development"

• GEF Evaluation of climate change and development platform - www.climate-eval.org/

• Water and sanitation: Jyotsna Jalan and Martin Ravallion (2003), 'Does piped water reduce diarrhea for children in rural India?', Journal of Econometrics, vol. 112, issue 1, pages 153-173

• World Health Organization, Unicef (2006) ‘Core Questions on Drinking-Water and Sanitation for Household Surveys’ WHO, Switzerland

Paper series

• NONIE Working Paper series

• World Bank PREM 'Doing Impact Evaluation and Impact Evaluation Working Paper series'

• World Bank Impact Evaluation Working Paper series

Tool-kits and presentations

• World Bank Impact Evaluation Toolkit

• The Ins and Outs of Impact Evaluation and PSIA: PREM workshop material

• PREVAL Infographics 'Developing a baseline study'

• World Bank PowerPoint 'Developing a High Quality Baseline'

• World Bank "Are you being served: New tools for measuring service delivery"

• University of Reading 'Some basic ideas of sampling' 

• 3ie Impact evaluation Glossary

• 3ie PowerPoint "What is impact evaluation, when and how should we use it, and how to go about it?"

• 3ie PowerPoint "Evaluating governance through theory of change"

• 3ie PowerPoint "Experimental and Quasi-Experimental designs"

• 3ie PowerPoint "Conditional Cash Transfers (CCTs) and Health"

• Presentations and workshop material from the 2009 Cairo conference on Perspectives on Impact Evaluations

• Additional presentations from 3ie workshops

Websites

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)

• Africa Impact Evaluation Network (African researchers and impact evaluation projects datasets)

• Evaluation portal (general evaluation links)

• Evaluation listservs

• Manpower Demostration Research Cooperation (MDRC)

• Network of Networks on Impact Evaluation (NONIE)

• PREM (World Bank) Impact Site (includes links to impact evaluation database and "Doing impact evaluation" Working Paper series)

• Wikipedia on impact evaluation

• Resources for Program Evaluation and Social Research Methods