UCG Research Seminar: On the use of impact evaluations: how measuring policy effectiveness fails to shape effective policies

The UCG Research Seminar series is dedicated to fostering interdisciplinary discussions and sharing innovative research within our faculty. During our next session, Dr. Menno Rol will discuss how measuring policy effectiveness fails to shape effective policies.

Abstract

Policy makers have grown more aware that policy making requires an evidence base, much like medicine. Analogous to pharmacological practice, producing the evidence for good policy is taken to require quantitative analysis. But what worked before and there need not work now and here. It seems that the current dominance of quantitative methods to measure impact falls short of the need to learn which policy interventions can be expected to produce what results for whom. I will analyse some of the causes of the problem and propose the necessary conditions for doing it better.