Evaluating Social Programs
Introduces concepts and skills to plan and conduct evaluations of social programs. Over the semester students will work with a client to produce an evaluation plan.
Students will learn about negotiating a plan with a client, working with stakeholders, forms of evaluation (impact evaluation, consumer satisfaction, MSC, qualitative designs), evaluation ethics, how to develop indicators and program logic, and finally how to ensure evaluation findings are disseminated and utilised.
This course will provide a thorough understanding of randomized evaluations, with pragmatic step-by-step training for conducting one’s own evaluation. Through a combination of lectures and case studies from real randomized evaluations, the course will focus on the benefits and methods of randomization, choosing an appropriate sample size, and common threats and pitfalls to the validity of an experiment. While the course centers on the why, how, and when of randomized evaluations, it will also impart insights on the importance of needs assessments, effectively measuring outcomes, quality control, and the monitoring methods most useful for impact evaluations.
This social impact course is designed for people from a variety of backgrounds: managers and researchers from international development organizations, foundations, governments, and non-governmental organizations from around the world, as well as trained economists looking to retool.