Research | 3ie

Focus area
Projects and Programs
Initiatives
View all

Improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health requires decision-makers to have evidence on what works or not, for whom and why, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (L&MIC).

Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health

3ie’s agricultural innovation evidence program supports evaluations aimed at understanding how best to encourage farmers in developing economies to adopt new inputs and practices.

Agricultural Innovation Evidence Program

Agriculture is a major source of sustenance for rural populations in low- and lower-middle income countries. But owing to weather, pests, diseases and price fluctuations, farmers face numerous risks, …

Agricultural Insurance Evidence Program

3ie is conducting mixed methods evaluations and systematic reviews to generate evidence around interventions working with smallholder fish farmers, particularly women, to increase productivity and div…

Aquaculture for Livelihoods, Nutrition and Women’s Empowerment

We are developing an easy-access tool to help you utilize 3ie’s Development Evidence Portal (DEP) — one of the world’s largest curated collections of impact evaluations and systematic reviews in inter…

DevChat: Development evidence chatbot – making evidence accessible

Launched in 2015, this program focused on generating evidence in priority sectors closely aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals. 3ie supported 14 rigorous, high-quality impact evaluations in fo…

Development Priorities Evidence Program

According to the United Nations estimates, 103 million youth worldwide lack basic literacy skills, and more than 60 per cent of them are women.

Education

South Asia, home to 600 million children, has the highest number of young people globally.

Empowering Adolescents in South Asia

India has more than 250 million adolescents constituting over 20 percent of the country’s total population.

Empowering Adolescents: A Collaborative Research Partnership

Over the past 30 years, while advocacy for democracy and democratic freedoms has spread, countries across the globe have been experiencing democratic backsliding. There are more contexts with deterior…

Evidence for Curbing Democratic Backsliding

3ie worked with USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG Center), and NORC at the University of Chicago to increase knowledge on the global advancement of democracy…

Evidence Mapping for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance

To address the challenge of malnutrition and food insecurity, decision-makers need to understand what evidence exists on various interventions.

Food Systems and Nutrition Evidence and Gap Map

3ie projects and programs are uncovering ways to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Gender and Women’s Empowerment

Digitalization has taken place at an unprecedented rate in many low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs), including India. However, the gender gap is still substantial as 265 million fewer women …

Gender intentionality in large-scale digital public infrastructure in India

Development programming continues to expand and diversify to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. While organizations are increasingly recognizing that better decisions start with better evidenc…

Global Evidence Commitment: Advancing Use of Rigorous Evidence

3ie, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is supporting studies and other work on HIV combination prevention to maximize the useful knowledge and policy implications from these interventions.

HIV Combination Prevention Program

To gain a better understanding of whether providing HIV self-tests to people would increase HIV testing rates, and who might benefit most from availability of tests, 3ie funded seven pilot interventio…

HIV Self-Testing Evidence Program

3ie supported seven impact evaluations under this program that provided rigorous evidence to improve the quality of life of people living in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

Humanitarian

Vaccines prevent millions of child deaths each year. Over the past few years, however, global immunization coverage has stagnated and even slipped, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (L&…

Innovations in Increasing Immunisation Evidence Programme

Immunization

This 3ie-led evaluation will inform future design and scale-up of the Saamuhika Shakti or Collective Impact initiative that aims to improve the lives of waste pickers in Bengaluru, in India’s southern…

Improving Lives of Waste Pickers in India

The accessibility and use of big data and data science methods such as geospatial analysis, machine learning, and generative AI are increasing rapidly in the field of international development. 3ie co…

Innovations in Data for Impact Evaluation

3ie’s Cost Evidence Group designs and implements rigorous cost analysis, including as an integrated part of impact evaluation, provides training on measuring and analyzing costs, and supports partners…

Integrating Cost Evidence in Research and Evaluation

Much of the evidence surrounding the integration of HIV services with maternal, neonatal, and child health services, as well as with sexual and reproductive health and family planning services, does n…

Integration of HIV Services Evidence Program

The reasons for global youth unemployment are complex and multifaceted. A promising area of development programming is technical and vocational education and skills training (TVET), which bridges the …

Learning-to-Earning: Mapping Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Skills Ev…

3ie has collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to strengthen its commitment to evidence-informed decision-making in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Leveraging evidence to enhance IDB’s development impact in LAC

Widespread hunger, malnutrition, and water insecurity have devastating and long-lasting impacts on the health and well-being of millions of people around the globe.

Mapping the Evidence on Resilience and Food Security

3ie, the World Health Organization and the Partnership for Maternal Newborn & Child Health worked together to create a gap map to assess the evidence available on social, behavioural and community eng…

Maternal and Child Health

3ie’s climate change research program focuses on promoting evidence-informed policies and programs to strengthen climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

Mitigating and Adapting to Climate Change

Everyone needs reliable access to sufficient, safe and affordable nutritious food, coupled with a sanitary environment, adequate health, education and care. However, all too often, this need is not fu…

Nutrition and Food Security

Fragility has expensive, long-term consequences and trying to build peace in situations of protracted conflicts is becoming the norm. In 2020, 1.8 billion people – nearly a quarter of the world's popu…

Peacebuilding

3ie, in partnership with the Philippines National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is implementing a multi-year Philippines Evidence P…

Philippines Evidence Program

3ie is working on mapping the evidence on food security interventions in humanitarian settings.

Promoting and Mapping Rigorous Evaluations in Humanitarian Settings

Delivering sustainable energy for all (SDG7) is key to making progress on several sustainable goals.

Promoting and Mapping Sustainable Energy Evidence to Achieve SDG7

Safe sanitation is a key determinant of many public health outcomes and ending open defecation is necessary in order to achieve safe sanitation. To this end, the Indian government has led a massive sa…

Promoting Latrine Use in Rural India Evidence Program

One’s health and well-being are related to one’s sexual and reproductive rights, which are human rights. However, many people still encounter challenges to bodily autonomy, sexual choice and accessing…

Promoting Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

We set up our Replication Program to address the need for a freely available global public good that helps improve the quality and reliability of impact evaluation evidence used for development decisi…

Replication

India's Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission aims to link the rural poor to sustainable livelihood opportunities and financial services. 3ie has been generating rigorous evide…

Rural India Livelihoods Project

Globally, more people have access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) than ever before. But we are still a long way from achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring the availabili…

Sanitation and Hygiene Evidence Program

Various state governments in India are providing sanitation-linked livelihoods programs to empower economically and socially marginalized sections in urban areas such as women, transgenders and the di…

Sanitation-Linked Livelihoods Program

This program supports impact evaluations to build the evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions that reduce the risks faced by the poor through participation in public works and employment p…

Social Protection

3ie, in partnership with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), is working to strengthen evidence use in MCC’s program designs and investment decisions.

Strengthening Evidence and Economic Modelling Partnership Project

3ie worked with a consortium led by Itad to conduct a baseline review and formative study of the design, implementation and emerging results of the COVAX Facility and AMC to support accountability and…

Review and Study of COVAX Facility and Advance Market Commitment

Study of the COVAX Facility and Advance Market Commitment

People displaced because of humanitarian crises around the world face immense challenges meeting basic needs, accessing public services and livelihood support.

Studying Impacts of a Humanitarian Cash Transfer Program in Colombia

Around 80 percent of the world’s poor reside in rural areas (FAO), with many dependent on small-scale and subsistence farming. While development actors have prioritized efforts to integrate smallholde…

Studying the effects of market access on smallholder farmers

The COVID-19 crisis had negative spillover effects across the global economy, including on bank lending and other performance-related outcomes. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EB…

Studying the impact of EBRD’s COVID-19 response package

India has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in South Asia. 3ie’s Swashakt Program is supporting interventions to identify what works to enhance viability, scalability and return…

Swashakt: Empowering Indian Women’s Collectives

Irregular migration arises from a mix of factors—economic opportunities, shocks, legal pathways, and migration management. While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes freedom of movemen…

Mapping evidence to address root causes and drivers of irregular migration

Synthesizing evidence to address root causes and drivers of irregular migration

We work with governments and partners around the world to strengthen their capacities in evaluation and evidence-informed decision-making.

Training delivered with the International Security and Development Center and Meraki Analytics with 3ie in Sierra Leone

Training Initiative for Evidence-Informed Policy

The natural resource governance sector is under-researched and programs in it are under-evaluated. 3ie supported seven impact evaluations to fill critical knowledge gaps on what works to improve gover…

Transparency and Accountability in Natural Resources Evidence Program

3ie champions the research transparency and reproducibility movement as a means of understanding and mitigating challenges to the credibility of social science research, while also working toward stro…

Transparent, Reproducible and Ethical Evidence (TREE)

3ie, in partnership with the Uganda Office of the Prime Minister (OPM Uganda), implemented a multi-year program to strengthen the production and use of evaluation evidence with selected ministries.

Uganda

Climate events have significant consequences on societies and economies, deeply affecting people’s livelihoods, income, food security, and health conditions. Climate patterns can influence weather in …

Understanding Impacts of El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole in the Indo-Pacific

3ie and the UK Government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) are producing a series of synthesis projects to understand the evidence base to inform future programming and res…

Understanding the Evidence on Climate Change, Biodiversity and Livelihoods

It is widely recognized that preventive measures are crucial in tackling the HIV epidemic in Sub-Saharan Africa. Three randomized controlled trials and numerous observational studies have shown that m…

Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision Evidence Program

The West Africa Capacity-building and Impact Evaluation (WACIE) program is a regional initiative that supports and promotes the culture of evidence-informed decision-making among high-level policymake…

West Africa Capacity-building and Impact Evaluation

Featured

Women's journey from the kitchen to the community spaces in rural India

Blogs

3ie’s multi-year evaluation of one of the world’s largest poverty-alleviation programs, i.e. India’s Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM), has generated rich eviden...

West African Development Bank headquarters in Lomé

Why long-term partnerships matter for development: Insights from 3ie’s collaboration with the West African Development Bank

Blogs

Governments face increasingly complex challenges: food insecurity, climate shocks, rising demands for accountability, and more. To make sound decisions, they need reliable answers to questions of what...

Can local peacebuilding work? Promising evidence from two new studies

Blogs

Is it possible to reduce violent conflict at a local level through peacebuilding projects? If so, what kind of interventions are effective in doing so? Two recent studies from Nigeria and Sudan sugges...

Shaping inclusive food systems in emerging economies with a dynamic private sector

Events

Launching an evidence gap map on the learning-to-earning transition: A call for papers

Blogs

As 2025 comes to a close, global NEET (not in education, employment, or training) rates continue to be a pressing issue. According to ILO estimates, this constitutes 25% of the world’s population in t...