Marie Gaarder

Marie Gaarder
Designation: Executive Director, 3ie
Marie Gaarder is the executive director of 3ie, leading the organisation’s efforts to improve lives in low- and middle-income countries by supporting the generation and effective use of high-quality and relevant evidence to inform decision-making.
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Blogs by author

External validity: policy demand is there but research needs to boost supply

Jörg Peters, Monica Jain, Marie Gaarder 31 December 2019 blog  

A randomised controlled trial (RCT) in a Northern district of Uganda finds that the young adults who receive cash transfers use it to buy more food for their families, football shirts, and airtime for their mobile phones, compared to those in control areas. Would the pattern be the same if young adults in central Uganda are given cash transfers? Would the findings replicate if the cash transfers were given to young women in Senegal? This stylised example points to the crucial question of generalisability of program impacts to other contexts – commonly referred to as external validity.

Sounds good... but what will it cost? Making the case for rigorous costing in impact evaluation research

Marie Gaarder, Liz Brown 11 December 2019 blog  

Imagine two government programs—a job training program and a job matching program—that perform equally well in terms of boosting employment outcomes. Now think about which is more cost-effective. If your answer is ‘no idea’ you’re not alone! Most of the time, we don’t have the cost evidence available to discern this important difference.

Misdiagnosis and the evidence trap: a tale of inadequate program design

Marie Gaarder, Vibecke Dixon 01 November 2018 blog  

Imagine you wake up tomorrow with a headache, sore throat and fever, perhaps nothing unusual at this time of the year. You drag yourself out of bed and head to your doctor to ask her for something to make you feel better. However, if you had first looked up your symptoms on the net, you would have been surprised to find that headache, sore throat and fever can be caused by 136 different conditions, among them typhoid fever, measles, and brain tumour.

Third party monitoring in volatile environments – do the benefits outweigh the risks?

Marie Gaarder, Lauren Kelly 30 January 2018 blog  
Writing on the What Work’s World Bank Group blogsite last July, Lauren Kelly and Marie Gaarder called for a “wide debate” about the important issues raised by the increasing trend of development agencies to use third parties to carry out monitoring, data collection and other work in fragile and conflicted-affected locations too risky for their own staff.

Evidence gap maps: an innovative tool for seeing what we know and don’t know

Birte Snilstveit, Marie Gaarder 05 February 2015 blog  

Whether you are a research funder, decision maker or researcher, keeping up with the ever expanding evidence base is not easy. Over 2600 impact evaluations and 300 systematic reviews assessing the effects of international development interventions have been completed or are ongoing to help answer that question and understand how, why and at what cost.  Despite this increase in quality evidence, more evidence is needed, which is why funders and researchers continue to fund and produce new research.