National symposium on evidence synthesis for medicine, public health and social development

Zeba Siddiqui presented findings from 3ie’s recent working paper on transparency and accountability in the extractives sector. She provided an overview of the existing evidence and the theory of change, discussed specific findings across seven impact evaluations, key learnings, as well as major challenges encountered during the implementation and evaluation phases. One of the interesting findings is that information combined with deliberation activities positively affected knowledge, trust and demand for accountability.

Read working paper | Watch video

Zeba also presented the upcoming transparency and accountability evidence gap map. She explained the importance of the map in the extractives sector, its geographical scope, as well as the prisma search strategy followed by the team. She shared that key evidence gaps exist on international transparency initiatives, as well as environmental and financial audit sectors. Visit our transparency and accountability in natural resources programme page to learn about our work in this area.

Mark Engelbert presented on the agricultural innovations evidence gap map. He shared that there are gaps in evidence on institutional arrangements in agriculture (such as land titling) and agricultural innovations on environmental outcomes like greenhouse gas emissions. Most studies are from a handful of countries (India and East Africa) and use a quasi-experimental methodology. He also spoke about ways our agricultural innovations evidence programme is (and isn’t) addressing these gaps. 3ie’s programme has a number of randomised evaluations, thus addressing gaps in methods, but there is still a need to gather evidence in a broader range of countries.

View online interactive gap map | Read report | Read brief | Read blog

Radhika Menon was part of a panel on evidence-informed journalism in India. She talked about the importance of bridging the gap between researchers and journalists and developing a deep long-term engagement to ensure evidence is accessible, useable and shareable. She spoke on 3ie’s experiences of communicating findings from our education review with the media, and shared some ideas on how journalists and researchers could work better together, such as researchers helping the media assess the quality of data and evidence. The other panellists were journalists from India Science Wire and India Spend. They highlighted issues such as media reporting on information where there is evidence and not reporting stories even where there is overwhelming evidence, and discussed how political and commercial interests have driven media reportage.