Centre for Development Impact Update – Winter 2016
Over the last six months, the Centre for Development Impact (CDI) has continued to contribute to learning and debates about the way we evaluate impact.
15/12/2016
Our partnership with the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the University of East Anglia (UEA) cuts across disciplines, policy research areas and evaluation silos, and provides a ‘space’ to convene and co-construct different ways of assessing impact.
As our recent network feedback survey shows, our readership is equally diverse from across academia, NGOs, and evaluators, with a particularly strong readership in sub-Saharan Africa.
A particular highlight over the past six months has been our continued work on what ‘evaluating impact’ might mean in light of new global challenges, new actors and new demands for impact evidence. Our work with Swedfund and the Venture Capital Trust Fund (in Ghana), explores the measurement challenges and social impact claims of investors. See our recent IDS Policy Brief which looks at what social media tells us about this emerging market. Plus, our contribution to a recent Wilton Park event explored the challenge for evaluators and their role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
We’ve also been highlighting the importance of ethics in evaluation and the different values
and perspectives that underpin evaluation and knowledge. Our special editorial on evaluation ethics in the Journal for Development Effectiveness highlights this work through four new articles:
Ethics in Evaluation, Chris Barnett and Laura Camfield (if you are unable to access the article, please email the authors)
We continue our work on exploring the application of a range of approaches and evaluation designs for assessing the impact of complex development and policy interventions. Recent CDI seminars at IDS and UEA include: