Evaluation in the Practice of strongDevelopmentstrong - Ipdet.pdf

WPS4547 d e z i r o h t u A e r Policy ReseaRch WoRking Pa PeR 4547 u s o l c s i D c i l b u P d e z i r o h t u A e r u Evaluation in the Practice of Development s o l c s i D c Martin Ravallion i l b u P d e z i r o h t u A e r u s o l c s i D c i l b u P d e z i r o h t u A e r u s o l c s i D c i l b The World Bank u P Directors Office Development Research Group March 2008 Policy ReseaRch WoRking PaPeR 4547 Abstract Knowledge about development effectiveness is questions about development effectiveness unanswered. constrained by two factors. First, the project staff in The paper proposes ten steps for making evaluations governments and international agencies who decide how more relevant to the needs of practitioners. It is argued much to invest in research on specific interventions are that more attention needs to be given to identifying often not well informed about the returns to rigorous policy-relevant questions (including the case for evaluation and (even when they are) cannot be expected intervention); that a broader approach should be taken to to take full account of the external benefits to others the problems of internal validity; and that the problems from new knowledge. This leads to under-investment of external validity (including scaling up) merit more in evaluative research. Second, while standard methods attention. of i