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Arianna Legovini Head, Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME) World Bank. Impact Evaluation for Real Time Decision Making. FIRST What is a results chain?. Example of a results chain. ?. The results chain. Developmental hypothesis that helps you define:
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Arianna Legovini Head, Development Impact Evaluation Initiative (DIME) World Bank Impact Evaluation for Real Time Decision Making
The results chain • Developmental hypothesis that helps you define: • what you are doing and for what purpose • what needs to be monitored and • what needs to be evaluated
What is monitoring? • Monitoring tracks indicators over time (in the treatment group) • It is descriptive before-after analysis • It tells us whether things are moving in the right direction
What is Impact Evaluation? • Impact evaluation tracks outcomes over time in the treatment group relative to a control group • It measures the effect of an intervention on outcomes relative to a counterfactual • what would have happened without it? • It identifies the causal output-outcome link • separately from the effect of other time-varying factors
DEMAND RESPONSE Monitoring & Impact Evaluation • Use impact evaluation to measure effectiveness (output-outcome) • Use monitoring to track implementation efficiency (input-output) MONITOR EFFICIENCY INPUTS OUTPUTS OUTCOMES EVALUATE EFFECTIVENESS $UPPLY
Discuss among yourselves (5m) • What happens if you use monitoring to evaluate impact?
Discuss among yourselves (5m) • What happens if you use monitoring to evaluate impact? • You get the wrong answer… …100% of the times Before After A C Impact B B Change t0 t1 Intervention
NEXT: Do we know ex ante… • On Community Driven Development, what • information will get communities to respond? • facilitation will results in high quality proposals? • rules will increase inclusion in the decision-making process? • monitoring mechanisms and co-payments will improve local projects and their use of funds? • On Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, • are community based or targeted approaches most effective? • should we try to delink combatants from units or build on unit cohesion? • is including or excluding command structures most effective?
Trial and error • We turn to our best judgment for guidance and pick an information campaign, a package of services, a structure of incentives. • Is there any other campaign, package, incentive structure that will do better?
The decision process is complex • A few big decisions are taken during design but many more decisions are taken during roll out & implementation
Pick up the ball:What is a results tree? • A results tree is a representation of the set of results chains that are considered viable during program design or program restructuring. • Is a set of competing policy and operational alternatives to reach a specific objective.
Example of a decision tree for a combatant reintegration program
How to select between plausible alternatives? • Establish which decisions will be taken upfront and which will be tested during roll-out • Experimentally test critical nodes: measure the impact of one option relative to another or to no intervention • Pick better and discard worse during implementation • Cannot learn everything at once • Select carefully what you want to test by involving all relevant partners
Walk along the decision tree to get more results out of a reintegration program
Discuss among yourselves (5m) • How many times do you make changes to your program on the feeling that something is not working right? • How useful would it be to know for sure which ways are best?
Why evaluate? • Improve quality of programs • Test alternatives and inform design in real time • Increase program effectiveness • Answer the “so what” questions • Build government institutions for evidence-based policy-making • Plan for implementation of options not solutions • Find out what alternatives work best • Adopt better way of doing business and taking decisions
PM/Presidency: Communicate to constituencies Treasury/ Finance: Allocate budget CAMPAIGN PROMISES BUDGET Accountability Cost-effectiveness of different programs Effects of government program SERVICE DELIVERY Line ministries: Deliver programs and negotiate budget Cost-effectiveness of alternatives and effect of sector programs The market for evidence
Shifting Program Paradigm From: • Program is a set of activities designed to deliver expected results • Program will either deliver or not To: • Program is menu of alternatives with a learning strategy to find out which work best • Change programs overtime to deliver more results
Shifting Evaluation Paradigm • From retrospective, external, independent evaluation • Top down • Determine whether program worked or not • To prospective, internal, and operationally driven impact evaluation /externally validated • Set program learning agenda bottom up • Consider plausible implementation alternatives • Test scientifically and adopt best • Just-in-time advice to improve effectiveness of program over time
Retrospective (designed & evaluated ex-post) vs. Prospective (designed ex-ante and evaluated ex-post) • Retrospective impact evaluation: • Collecting data after the event you don’t know how participants and nonparticipants compared before the program started • Have to try and disentangle why the project was implemented where and when it was, after the event • Prospective impact evaluation: • design the evaluation to answer the question you need to answer • collect the data you will need later • Ensure analytical validity 24
Is this a one shot analytical product? • Evaluative process to provide useful (actionable) information at each step of the impact evaluation
Discuss among yourselves (5m) • What are some of the entry points in policy-making cycles? • What are some of the answers you would like to have?
Ethical considerations • It is not ethical to deny benefits to something that is available and we know works • HIV medicine proven to prolong life • It is ethical to test interventions before scale up if we don’t know if it works and whether it has unforeseen consequences • Food aid may destroy local markets create perverse incentives • Most times we use opportunities created by roll out and budget constraints to evaluate so as to minimize ethical considerations AND • We can always and should test alternatives to maximize out results