Spotlight
Insights from the Development Evidence Portal: Where is the evidence (like, on a map)?
 
As we mark 3ie’s 15 years, we are taking stock of the state of the evidence using one of our major contributions to the field of evidence use – the Development Evidence Portal (DEP). In a new blog series, we’ll be sharing glimpses of what DEP data can tell us about the evidence on effectiveness of development interventions. Each post will highlight a particular region and talk about the volume of available evidence and any interesting patterns in the country-level breakdown, the types of interventions or outcomes that tend to be studied in the region, the evaluation methods used, and so on. In this preview blog, we see how impact evaluations are distributed across regions and the interesting underlying trends in the evolution of the evidence base over time.
Read blog
Featured
World Immunization Week – Explore 3ie’s latest research
 


In keeping with ‘The Big Catch-up’ theme of World Immunization Week this year, here’s a round-up of some of the latest and upcoming evidence from 3ie
  • What interventions are effective in putting child immunization back on track? 3ie’s Monica Jain and Maren Duvendack share insights from their upcoming systematic review of reviews—the first such effort that includes evidence from 24 systematic reviews. The authors use a uniform conceptual framework to understand what really works in to address the enablers and barriers related to immunization access, vaccine delivery, and demand in low- and middle-income countries.
    Read Blog | Watch presentation | Download slides
     
  • So where is the evidence, and what gaps remain? Our evidence gap map on improving routine childhood immunization outcomes in low-income and middle-income countries finds that impact evaluation evidence is heavily concentrated in a handful of countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The most frequently evaluated interventions are those related to education and material incentives for caregivers or health workers.
    Read the article in BMJ Open | Explore gap map
  • Are community interventions effective (and cost-effective?): Our systematic review examines 60+ studies on community engagement interventions and found that they can help put a stop to the backslide in childhood immunization.
Read the article in BMJ Open. Know more about our work on immunization here.
Featured
Mapping water, sanitation and health achievements to prosperity, stability and resilience outcomes – An innovative systematic map

The COVID-19 pandemic brought a renewed focus to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues, as it highlighted that there was still substantial work that needed to be done in this sector. Though there has been significant progress in understanding the impacts of WASH on health outcomes, less is understood about the broader implications it may have on higher-level development outcomes, such as prosperity, stability, and resilience.

To address this gap, 3ie was commissioned by USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security to develop an innovative systematic map. This map goes beyond the effects of WASH interventions on health to understand the research base that links the achievement of WASH outcomes (improving access to drinking water, improving access to sanitation facilities, and increasing practices of hygiene behaviors) with high-level development outcomes (improved prosperity, increased stability, and enhanced resilience in low- and middle-income countries). The map, identifying 279 studies, is 3ie's first study employing an outcome-to-outcome mapping approach. Our research team elaborates more in this blog published on the Global Waters blog site.

Explore the map | Read the report | Read the brief
Blogs
Visit 3ie’s Evidence Matters blog site to view all posts.
 
Publications
Impact evaluation report: Impact Evaluation of the ADN Dignidad Program: Understanding the impact of a Humanitarian Cash Transfer (HCT) program in Colombia
 
In the news
Vox article | The US foreign aid budget could do a lot more good. This House bill wants to force it to.

3ie’s Daniel Handel contributes to the discussion on the Fostering Innovation in Global Development Act of the US and cautions that by focusing on “innovation” as opposed to, say, “evidence-based” interventions, the bill’s wording “may lead decision-makers away from programs that have been found to be relatively cost-effective but which aren’t particularly new”. Read article
 
Events
Upcoming events
Strengthening resilience against shocks and stressors in L&MICs | A 3ie Evidence Gap Map and report

Date: 11 May 2023 | Time: 15:00-16:30 BST
Venue: Online


The effects of climate change, human-made disasters, and other recurring crises are contributing to multifaceted and complex emergencies globally. In this context, it is important to have an evidence-based and multidimensional understanding of how these challenges intersect with other factors and how they may cause or exacerbate them. 3ie’s latest evidence gap map (EGM) helps improve access to research on the effectiveness of interventions to strengthen resilience to shocks and stressors in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). Our map makes it easier to identify lessons on what works from existing systematic reviews and clusters of primary studies which might be synthesized in a systematic review. In this launch event, hosted by British Expertise International, experts will discuss the rationale behind the map, the structure and delve into the implications of the findings.

Chair: Alexandra Barnes, Director, Infrastructure and Climate Resilience, British Expertise International

Panellists:
  • John Meyer, Senior Strategy and Impact Advisor, Center for Resilience, USAID
  • Christophe Bene, Principal Scientist and Senior Policy Advisor, CIAT
  • Miriam Berretta, Senior Research Associate, 3ie
  • Carolyn Huang, Senior Evaluation Specialist, 3ie
Read moreRegister
 
Reinvigorating the evidence agenda at development organizations

Date: 24 May 2023 | Time: 9.30 am EDT
Venue: CGD Office, Washington, DC and online

At this discussion, evidence leaders, operational experts, decision-makers and researchers will reflect on and share ways to address institutional and structural barriers to evidence use. The aim of this panel discussion is to promote learning and strengthen the use of evidence in development institutions. We are co-organizing this event with our long-standing partners at the Center for Global Development (CGD).

Keynote: Ilan Goldfajn, President, Inter-American Development Bank
Chairs: Amanda Glassman, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development (CGD) and CEO, CGD Europe;
Marie Gaarder, Executive Director, 3ie
Panellists:

  • Arianna Legovini, Director of the Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), World Bank
  • Santiago Levy, Non-resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and 3ie Board Member
  • Sekhar Bonu, former Director General, Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office, NITI Aayog, New Delhi, and 3ie Board Member
  • Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Director of Knowledge, Norad
  • Anne Healy, USAID
  • Charlotte Watts, Chief Scientific Adviser and Director, Research and Evidence, FCDO (TBC)

The event will be organized in person as well as virtually.
Register | Read more


Past event

USAID Agency Learning and Evidence Month | Closing Plenary | Evidence Architecture: How have two decades of evidence accumulation transformed development?
Date: 27 April 2023 | Time: 8 PM EST

This high-level panel examined how key actors in the movement to develop a scientific evidence base for development have established this learning over the last two decades and how we can systematically summarize, gather, and showcase the evidence generated for practitioner use. Panellists have led this movement and transformed how development establishes and accumulates learning as a community and have institutionalized key systems for sharing findings out with the broader community.

Speakers

  • Arianna Legovini, Director, Development Impact Evaluation (DIME), World Bank
  • Marie Gaarder, Executive Director, 3ie
  • Tom Kelly, Deputy Vice President of the Department for Policy and Evaluation, Millennium Challenge Corporation
  • Paulo Gomez, Management Information System / Data Steward / Digital Development Advisor, USAID/Colombia
  • Andrew Greer, Foreign Service Officer, USAID
  • Julie Chen, Office Director, Learning, Evaluation and Research, USAID
  • Morgan Holmes, Agency Learning and Evidence Team Lead, Office of Learning, Evaluation and Research, USAID (moderator)
Read summary blog
Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics and the Social Sciences
Session 8: Should funders require reproducible archives?

The Conference on Reproducibility and Replicability in Economics and the Social Sciences is a series of virtual and in-person panels on the topics of reproducibility, replicability, and transparency in the social sciences. The conference addresses the following topics: the initiation of research, the conduct of research, the preparation of research for publication, and the scrutiny after publication. 3ie’s Director of Evaluation, Sebastian Martinez, contributed to the discussion by stressing on the organization’s work around the Push Button Replication (PBR) and how 3ie enforces computational reproducibility of funded research.
Speakers:
  • Martin Halbert, NSF
  • Sebastian Martinez, 3ie
  • Stuart Buck, Good Science Project
  • Lars Vilhuber, Cornell University, AEA Data Editor (Moderator)

BITSS Open Research Seminar (Spring 2023)
Date: 6 April 2023 | Time 9 AM PT

BITSS webinar series promotes and shares knowledge about the use of tools and practices for transparency and reproducibility in social science research. At one of its sessions, 3ie’s Indira Patil discussed the multiple risks and difficult situations faced by surveyors during data collection, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). Through the findings of a descriptive study that systematically documents some of the key health and safety challenges of the surveyors during primary data collection in India, she also proposed some best practices around institutional and context-specific measures that can be adopted to mitigate the challenges.

View the recording
 
Jobs
Join our growing and dynamic team by applying for one of these unique and impactful roles. View all the current opportunities here.
 
Thank you from the team at Journal of Development Effectiveness

We take this opportunity to thank Emmanuel Jimenez (Manny) as he steps down from the Editor-in-Chief position of the Journal of Development Effectiveness (JDEFF). Being at the helm of the journal for more than eight years, he has led JDEFF to great improvements. Thanks to Manny leading the editors' team, JDEFF has been able to publish important work reporting evidence of the impact of development interventions. We wish him the best in his ongoing role as Director General for Independent Evaluation at the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The Journal of Development Effectiveness publishes papers reporting evidence of impact of development interventions. To know how you can submit a paper, please visit the webpage.
 
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