Thread by @leightjessica

Lately I’ve been thinking more and participating in various conversations about how USAID commissions, uses research. Huge topic! But wanted to do a short🧵on what I’ve learned. 1/n

First and foremost in the hearts of most economists is DIV. DIV is awesome, as many others have pointed out! See this recent blog by @DaveEvansPhD and colleagues 2/n
cgdev.org/blog/case-evid…

But, DIV primarily funds evaluation of pilots and other interventions that are implemented outside of USAID and are not directly related to the work of missions – as summarized above (there are some exceptions). In that sense it is often separate from the main aid portfolio 3/n

Second, USAID funds evaluations of its major grants. The structure varies; typically, they’re arms-length projects (conducted by independently contracted firms) that conduct / report on large-scale surveys (populations / beneficiaries) at baseline / endline. 4/n

Lots of information about these evaluations on-line; also intended to serve as a mechanism of accountability for taxpayer funds. But, academics rarely run into this info (generally not published). 5/n

Fair to say many stakeholders wonder what the value for $$$ is in conducting these evaluations; how widely the results are shared; how much the lessons are used; etc. 6/n

Third (a different, smaller-scale model) has been evaluations conducted by @oesatgsa, a team that has the objective of building and using evidence in the federal government more broadly. 7/n
oes.gsa.gov/about/

@oesatgsa has worked on several projects with USAID, all transparently reported on their website (several also published in academic journals. 8/n
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

Team works with missions and implementing partners (all in health, so far) to translate behavioral insights into program improvements and test them in embedded evaluations using administrative data. This entails close collaborations (👍) and use of existing data systems (👍) 8/n

Designed to be efficient and responsive. All awesome! But also requires context where systems to support the evaluation are already in place. Can be challenging to reach out via USAID HQ to specific missions / projects. 9/n

Fourth, at IFPRI we do substantial evaluation work for USAID-funded projects, e.g. an ongoing five-year evaluation of a graduation model and social protection project in Ethiopia that I also work on 10/n
ifpri.org/project/streng…

Here, we work collaboratively with an implementing organization, mission and government stakeholders to launch a broad learning agenda (centered around a cRCT). Goal is to generate both academic outputs and be integrated into iterative learning / capacity-building 11/n

There is potential to innovate in methods/program, but we are also nested within USAID’s grant portfolio, hopefully integrated into broader aid debates. 12/n

Each of these learning tools has strengths and weaknesses. Hope over time we can see more balance in each method being deployed to answer specific questions relevant both to broader development debates and USAID’s own mission. 13/n

Results coming soon for both an OES evaluation I’ve been working on in Mozambique
oes.gsa.gov/projects/sms-m…
And for SPIR! Excited to share them. End of 🧵.14/n