Category Archives: Uncategorized

Teaching qualitative analysis is not easy for several reasons. first, an awful lot of material on doing qualitative research focuses on data collection. relatedly, then, a lot of academic papers that draw on qualitative data and analytic methods focus on data collection and organization. too often the use of an analytic software stands in for anContinueContinue reading “Teaching qualitative analysis: an intro”

*This is a joint post with Suvojit, here. . Avoiding “we saw the evidence and we made a decision…” “…and that decision was: given that the evidence didn’t confirm our priors or show a program to be a success, to try to downplay and hide the evidence.” . Before we dig into that statement (based-on-a-true-story-involving-people-like-us),ContinueContinue reading “Avoiding perversions of evidence-informed decision-making”

In draft work with Vegard Iversen (see here), we have been developing some ideas around using (and showing) both ex ante and ex post theories of change. This is partly in line with a learning agenda for theories of change (as outlined in Valters’ recent work here and in my follow-up here, among other places). AContinueContinue reading “Draft thoughts on showing the work over time in a theory of change (comments welcome)”

I attempted to start a very small trend on twitter tonight after reading a Mcsweeny’s article on the topic of rebunking. For one, the article (here) is quite funny and deserves a read. But, for two, it also introduces the idea of rebunking, as in ‘that conspiracy theory was technically debunked but I rebunked it.’ContinueContinue reading “#rebunking”

The important, excellent thing about Deaton’s work on aid, and it’s very incomplete overlap with development, is that it reminds me about all that ‘other stuff’ — arms trafficking, subsidies and fair trade, etc., that impinge profoundly on opportunities for economic and human development and capabilities around the globe. . The problem is, then, thatContinueContinue reading “What I’d like to read now”

a key part of data quality (and therefore research quality) is the design of questionnaires, interview schedules, and observation plans for generating primary data. it is somewhere between upsetting and galling, then, that these issues feature minimally in the training of social scientists planning to do (especially quantitative) empirical work. there are plenty of researchersContinueContinue reading “Survey design and methods matter (and sometimes people in Ghana aren’t truthful about loans)”

Last week, Craig Valters published new work on theories of change. he calls not for a new tool but for a more careful approach to practicing and engaging in development. that is, changing the state of the world for someone. And learning from it. And, ideally, communicating that learning. (Craig is pessimistic that we areContinueContinue reading “Reflecting on being radical: integrating theories of change as practice”

In looking at how the accumulated impact evaluation evidence in the social sciences is distributed — perhaps with an eye toward making the case for where to concentrate new funding — there is a tendency to categorize studies by sector. With this lens, it is clear that the evidence base remains dominated by health, socialContinueContinue reading “A small point on thinking about IEs by sector”