Category Archives: Causal inference strategies

The Rise and Risk of Evidence

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Katherine Hay

Our guest blogger this week is Katherine Hay, a senior member of the Evaluation Unit of the International Centre for Development Research. Based in New Delhi, India, she is an expert on the role of evaluation in development in South Asia. … Continue reading →

Posted in Appropriate inference, Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Development | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Causal inference for program theory evaluation

Posted on June 11, 2010 by Patricia Rogers

How do we find out whether programs, projects and policies have really made a difference? Given the complex array of other influences on the outcomes, is it all too hard? Jane and I have been doing some separate thinking and writing about this. Putting these together has produced a new map of the issues which might be very useful.
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Posted in Appropriate inference, Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Evaluation Theory | 14 Comments

Intention To Treat and checking for implementation failure and differential effects – questions about vitamin A trials in Ghana

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Patricia Rogers

Has a large RCT provided definitive proof that vitamin A supplementation is ineffective in reducing maternal mortality? Or could there be another explanation? And why hasn’t the widespread reporting of these findings examined these?

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Posted in Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Health | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

£6 million over 5 years – and STILL no genuine evaluation of Blueprint?

Posted on April 7, 2010 by Jane Davidson

When a large and expensive evaluation fails to produce useful results, it’s worth seeing if at least it can be useful as a cautionary tale. Blueprint is a UK Government-funded drugs education programme consisting of five components: drug education in … Continue reading →

Posted in Adequate scope, Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Education, Evaluation team composition, Evaluative questions & answers, Government programs, Learning from failure, The client's role | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Advocating for RCTs – with a non-RCT example?

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Patricia Rogers

Curious post by Tim Harford in the Financial Times recently “Political ideas need proper testing” that slides from advocating for better empirical investigation of public policy by systematic experimentation to discussing this only in terms of RCTs – and then uses as the exemplar a brilliant example of using other types of evidence to inform policy. Continue reading →

Posted in Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Government programs | Tagged , , | Leave a comment