Ex post impact assessments (epIAs) have long been produced by research centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) with a principal stated goal of informing the funding decisions of donor agencies, but there has been little formal analysis of the extent to...

The reduction of infant and child death is one of the eight millennium development goals (MDGs). In addition, one of the goal one indicators is child malnutrition. A central question for the development community is to understand the factors underlying child health and nutritional status. What...

Modelling is an approach to impact evaluation which uses mathematical models to describe social and economic relationships and to infer causality from an intervention to an outcome, and/or between an outcome and its determinants. Models with more than one equation are most valuable, as they...

Quasi-experimental research designs, like experimental designs, test causal hypotheses. Quasi-experimental designs identify a comparison group that is as similar as possible to the intervention group in terms of baseline (pre-intervention) characteristics. The comparison group captures what...

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) is an experimental form of impact evaluation in which the population receiving the programme or policy intervention is chosen at random from the eligible population, and a control group is also chosen at random from the same eligible population. It tests the...