Impact Evaluation

Development stakeholders — governments, funders, and implementing organisations — routinely face a fundamental question: did this successfully do what it set out to accomplish, and how well did it do that?

This is a radically different proposition from whether work took place – it asks whether the policy, programme, or innovation actually change outcomes for the people it was meant to reach. Answering that question well is the difference between funding good intentions, and funding successful outcomes.

We design and deliver impact evaluations built on the strongest available methods for causal inference. This includes randomized controlled trials (RCTs), where feasible and ethical, as well as quasi-experimental designs — difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, propensity score matching, instrumental variables, and synthetic control methods — for contexts where randomisation isn’t possible.

The method is chosen to fit the intervention, the operational realities of the partner, and the policy choices that the evidence will go on to inform.

We work with partners to clarify the theory of change underlying an intervention, identify the outcomes that matter most, and design an evaluation that is powered to detect meaningful effects. We pay close attention to ethical considerations, particularly in RCTs involving vulnerable populations, and to the practical constraints of implementing rigorous designs in real-world, often resource-constrained settings.

Throughout an evaluation, we combine technical rigour with attentiveness to how findings will actually be used. An evaluation that produces a statistically sound but practically irrelevant answer has limited value. We work closely with commissioning organisations to ensure research questions are policy-relevant from the outset, and we invest in communicating findings — through briefs, workshops, and technical reports — in ways that speak directly to the investment, scale-up, or design decisions partners are facing.

Our impact evaluation work spans sectors including Health & Nutrition, Education & Skills,  Finance, Financial Inclusion, Gender, Equity & Social Inclusion (GESI), Climate Change & Environmental Sustainability and geographies across the Indian Subcontinent.

We have partnered with a range of clients including the World Bank, Harvard University, and various state governments in India to evaluate interventions ranging from debiasing law enforcement to produce positive outcomes to address gender based violence, to seeing how educational interventions have long-term outcomes on how children develop skills in innovation, socio-emotional development, and finances.

Credible evidence on “what works” is a public good that extends beyond any single programme. Where possible, we design evaluations that contribute not only to a specific partner’s decision-making but to the broader evidence base that shapes development policy and practice.