3ie’s Virtual Evidence Weeks

3ie hosted a series of highly-interactive online events from 7-28 May, as part of our new Virtual Evidence Weeks.

We organised discussions on the role and importance of evidence in the midst of this ongoing global health crisis, the importance of cost evidence, cost-benefit analysis and scaling up programmes.

Start Date: 07 May 2020 End Date: 28 May 2020
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Evidence in the time of COVID-19 | 7 May 2020

Chair:
Marie Gaarder, 3ie

Speakers:
Norma Altshuler, Hewlett Foundation
Iqbal Dhaliwal, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
Birte Snilstveit, Director – Synthesis & Reviews and Head of 3ie London Office
Amos Njuguna, Associate Dean, USIU-A
Amanda Glassman, Center for Global Development

Evidence is already playing a key role in shaping our responses to COVID-19. But at the same time that the pandemic creates opportunities to broaden evidence use, it also raises numerous challenges for those working to collect, analyse, and synthesize data. About 600 people tuned in Thursday to watch our expert panel on evidence in the time of COVID-19, part of 3ie’s Virtual Evidence Weeks which continue through the remainder of the month.

Read the full event summary


3ie evidence portal – amplifying the effects of available research | 12 May 2020

Chair:
Marie Gaarder, Executive director, 3ie

Speakers:
Mark Engelbert, Evaluation Specialist, 3ie
Marion Krämer, Evaluator and team leader, DEval
Birte Snilstveit, Director – Synthesis & Reviews and Head of 3ie London Office

While we’re not yet in a world where finding the best development evidence is as easy as asking Alexa or Siri a question, 3ie’s new Development Evidence Portal gets us one step closer to that goal. The newly revamped repository of development evidence includes powerful search and filtering functions for its 3745 impact evaluations, 730 systematic reviews, and 20 evidence gap maps. As part of 3ie’s Virtual Evidence Weeks, our expert panel presented the portal’s features, explained how to use it, and discussed its role in increasing evidence uptake.

Read the event summary
Visit our Development Evidence Portal


So the intervention is effective… but what will it cost? | 14 May 2020

Chair:
Marie Gaarder, executive director, 3ie

Speakers:
Donfouet Hermann Pythagore Pierre, associate research scientist; African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC)
Mark Sundberg, deputy vice president and chief economist, MCC
Elizabeth Brown, lead, Cost Transparency Initiative, CEGA
Thania Paola de la Garza Navarrete, Head, Evaluation Unit, CONEVAL

Despite the key role of costs in determining which development interventions are implemented, cost analyses have not seen the same rise in prominence in the last decade as impact evaluations. To find out why, and to discuss how to bring cost evidence to the forefront, more than 200 people tuned in to the first of 3ie’s expert panels on cost evidence on Thursday, part of our ongoing Virtual Evidence Weeks.

Read the event summary


Methodological and practical barriers to integrating Cost-effectiveness Analysis and Cost-Benefit Analysis into impact evaluations | 21 May 2020

Chair:
Elizabeth Brown, lead, Cost Transparency Initiative, CEGA

Speakers:
Craig McIntosh, professor and co-director, Policy Design and Evaluation Lab, University of California, San Diego
Constantine Manda, Department of Political Science, Yale University
Caitlin Tulloch, associate director, Best Use of Resources, IRC
Catherine Pitt, Assistant professor of health economics, LSHTM

There is plenty of interest from policymakers in having cost analyses accompany impact evaluations, as we learned in last week’s Virtual Evidence Weeks panel (video here, summary blog post here). On Thursday, more than 300 people joined us to discuss the methodological and practical barriers to including cost analyses in impact evaluations. Our expert panellists agreed that overcoming these barriers will require pressure from funding organizations, efforts to standardize methods, and increased respect for the intellectual merit of cost analyses.

Read the event summary
Download the list of resources


Scaling up | 28 May 2020

Chair:
David De Ferranti, Director, Washington Office, Business Development, and Partnerships, 3ie

Speakers:
Musfiq Mobarak
, Professor, Economics, Yale University
Rachel Turner, Director, Economic Development, DFID
Johannes F. Linn, Non-resident senior fellow, Brookings Institution
Bidisha Barooah, Senior evaluation specialist, 3ie
Ruth Levine, Incoming CEO and Partner of IDinsight

Even if development projects are highly effective at a small scale, many are abandoned before they can have the type of large-scale impacts needed to alleviate poverty. To learn more about how projects can grow past the pilot phase, nearly 300 people joined 3ie’s expert panel on scaling up interventions, the last of its Virtual Evidence Weeks events.

Read the full event summary