Friday, February 20, 2009

Lessons from impact evaluations in LAC

In our seminar Lorenzo Moreno and Larissa Campuzano, researchers from Mathematica Policy Research, presented a paper where they try to identify barriers that prevent rigorous impact evaluations in Latin America and the Caribbean. They argue that there are different evaluation methods and that each of them has a different level of reliability, being the experimental evaluations the ones that are more rigorous. The presenters used the methodology of case study to analyze three social programs. First, Millenium Challenge Corporation Compact in El Salvador, that aims to improve the infrastructure of high schools, give scholarships to poor youth and adults, and provide guarantees and loans to micro and small producers, among other things. The second case analyzed was the Reform of the Social Safety Net in Jamaica, which provides cash transfers to participant households. And finally they analyzed the Habitat program in Mexico, where the intervention is carried out through founds allocated to municipalities to support urban, social and community development. The researchers mentioned the following barriers that prevent evaluations: lack of support for rigorous designs, little or no early planning nor interest to build on lessons learned and data limitations. Finally they presented the lessons learned when development and implementing the evaluations of the mentioned programs; these are: detailed knowledge of evaluation methodology, maintaining early communication with key decision makers, identify barriers and propose alternatives, confirming that the evaluation will answer key questions and limiting discussion of the design’s technical aspects to a group of experts.

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