Impact Evaluation for International Development
The Essential Guide
Routledge Textbooks in Development Economics Series

Impact evaluation is an important tool in research and policy making, as policymakers and donor agencies are under increasing pressure to justify public spending on social and economic interventions.

This book will guide the reader through both the basic and more advanced methods of impact evaluation, with a particular focus on impact evaluation within evidence-based policy making and in international development. It will address the design, commissioning, and management of impact evaluations, data management, statistical econometric analyses, and theory-based approaches to impact evaluation. It will also cover other components of evidence-based policy making such as systematic reviews, replication, and ethics in impact evaluation research and practice.

The book is organized in four parts, each part divided into stand-alone chapters. The chapters provide a theoretical discussion of the various topics related to impact evaluation, complemented with exercises, case studies and worked examples drawn from the international development literature. Iconic impact evaluation studies will be used to exemplify the challenges of development impact evaluations.

The authors have all successfully conducted impact evaluations in developing countries for many years, and the book builds on their experience in in teaching, research, and consulting on development issues. It will be of interest to students of development studies, development economics, political science, public health and other areas in the social sciences, as well as to development professionals and policymakers.

1. Evidence-based policy making and the evaluation problem 2. Theory-based impact evaluations Part B: Impact evaluation designs and techniques 3. Research designs 3.1 Social experiments 3.2 Observational designs 4. Analytical impact evaluation methods 4.1 Instrumental variables techniques 4.2 Propensity score matching 4.3 Regression discontinuity 4.4 Panel data and difference in difference estimations 5. Mixed method approaches Part C: Practical impact evaluation topics 6. How to design, commission, implement and budget for impact evaluations 7. Thinking outside the box: small n evaluations & complex interventions 8. Sampling & power calculation 9. Data production and management Part D: Related topics 10. Systematic Reviews – Meta-analysis 11. Research ethics and replication 12. Research communication 13. Conclusion

Maren Duvendack is a development economist with expertise in quantitative impact evaluation methodologies and applied econometrics. She is a Research Fellow in the RAPID team at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), UK, and was  previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC. Maren is also a part-time lecturer in development economics at UEA, UK where she is involved in the MSc in Impact Evaluation for International Development.

Richard Palmer-Jones is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. His work draws on an economics and agriculture background with interests in poverty and inequality, well-being, nutrition, health, education, agriculture, irrigation and natural resources. He has been involved in many evaluations of development interventions, several impact evaluations and replications of development research.

Laura Camfield is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of East Anglia, UK. She trained as an anthropologist, but now works collaboratively using qualitative and quantitative methods and training others in their use, most recently with the DFID-funded Young Lives longitudinal research study in Ethiopia. At UEA she convenes the main research training module for postgraduates and teaches on courses in impact evaluation, social development, and ethnography.