2020 Volume 20 Issue 2 Pages 89-103
As a practice of EBPM: Evidence-Based Policy Making (EBPM), impact evaluation has been widely practiced in international development field. The design widely used in the field is Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). This article compares and discusses the three emerging not-for-profit research institutes that disseminate the database of evaluation reports, J-PAL (The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab), IPA (Innovations for Poverty Action) and 3ie (International Initiative for Impact Evaluation). In addition, the traditional aid agencies, such as the World Bank, USAID of the United States, DFID of the United Kingdom and Japanese JICA will be compared and analyzed.
Based on those analysis, the emergent agenda will be proposed. They are: (1) the idea of “experimenting society” proposed by Campbell is now in reality and this current practice of impact evaluation should be disseminated more widely; (2) The reason why application of impact evaluation results is limited would be the old discussion is still continuing, that is “Island Effect”. All aid agencies claimed their success of individual project but the vast ocean (i.e., a whole country or a whole sector) remains unchanged; (3) The confusion between the practice of strategic planning/performance measurement and the practice of program evaluation which root is social science is widely observed, and they are actually complement each other, thus the camp for pushing impact evaluation using RCT design should understand there is another thought of strategic planning/performance measurement and there is possibility of collaboration. (4) Possibility of collaboration between research institutes and international NGOs should be pursued in the process of intervention and data collection at field; (5) Major private foundations which roots are IT industries provide vast financial support to the emerging not-for-profit research institutes and this might be the same trend observed at the whole international development field, that is “from government to private sector”
