Handbook on Impact Evaluation : Quantitative Methods and Practices
This book reviews quantitative methods and models of impact evaluation. The formal literature on impact evaluation methods and practices is large, with a few useful overviews. Yet there is a need to put the theory into practice in a hands-on fashio...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Publication |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000333037_20091210014322 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2693 |
| Summary: | This book reviews quantitative methods
and models of impact evaluation. The formal literature on
impact evaluation methods and practices is large, with a few
useful overviews. Yet there is a need to put the theory into
practice in a hands-on fashion for practitioners. This book
also details challenges and goals in other realms of
evaluation, including monitoring and evaluation (M&E),
operational evaluation, and mixed-methods approaches
combining quantitative and qualitative analyses. This book
is organized as follows. Chapter two reviews the basic
issues pertaining to an evaluation of an intervention to
reach certain targets and goals. It distinguishes impact
evaluation from related concepts such as M&E,
operational evaluation, qualitative versus quantitative
evaluation, and ex-ante versus ex post impact evaluation.
Chapter three focuses on the experimental design of an
impact evaluation, discussing its strengths and
shortcomings. Various non-experimental methods exist as
well, each of which are discussed in turn through chapters
four to seven. Chapter four examines matching methods,
including the propensity score matching technique. Chapter
five deal with double-difference methods in the context of
panel data, which relax some of the assumptions on the
potential sources of selection bias. Chapter six reviews the
instrumental variable method, which further relaxes
assumptions on self-selection. Chapter seven examines
regression discontinuity and pipeline methods, which exploit
the design of the program itself as potential sources of
identification of program impacts. Specifically, chapter
eight presents a discussion of how distributional impacts of
programs can be measured, including new techniques related
to quantile regression. Chapter nine discusses structural
approaches to program evaluation, including economic models
that can lay the groundwork for estimating direct and
indirect effects of a program. Finally, chapter ten
discusses the strengths and weaknesses of experimental and
non-experimental methods and also highlights the usefulness
of impact evaluation tools in policy making. |
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