Centre for Development Impact (CDI)

Description

The Centre for Development Impact (CDI) contributes to learning and innovation in the field of impact evaluation, through the use of appropriate, mixed method, and robust evaluation designs. It is a joint initiative between IDS, Itad and the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Debates around impact evaluation have received renewed interest in recent years. Alongside a growing pressure on politicians and policymakers to demonstrate results and value for money, conventional evaluation approaches are being critiqued for lacking in rigour, and/or being too narrowly focused and unable to capture complexity. CDI’s work helps to broaden the range of evaluation designs and methods, providing funders and evaluators alike with valuable insights and tools for evaluative thinking.

CDI helps to design, backstop and implementation of outcome and impact evaluations. At CDI, members place particular value in the appropriateness of evaluation design choices to a specific situation (the questions, the context, the intervention, the purpose, and resources).

Members also value ways in which the perspectives of the poor and most marginalised in society are reflected in evidence and how their voices can be amplified through the process of measuring change (design, data collection, analysis, and use). Often people are viewed narrowly as the ‘subject’ of research and evaluation, yet different perspectives and their framings can enrich both one's understanding of the impact, and through the process, empower people to influence transformational change.

Finally, the centre values impact evidence as a way to improve social accountability to citizens. Knowledge and evidence shape power relations. With increasing flows of capital being used for mission-based purposes, the democratic gap between those making decisions and those affected by interventions is set to widen. Members value ways in which evidence of impact can be used (and be part of deliberative processes) that increase accountability to those too often left behind.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2013

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

University of Sussex
Brighton

Partner Universities

University of East Anglia