This film accompanies session 1A “Impact Evaluation for Policymaking”. Presented by Beryl Leach, 3ie, and Miguel Jaramillo, Executive Director at Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE), the session will provide an introduction to rigorous evaluation methods to inform discussions on what works in development.

Coordinated by Carolina Robino, the session will be structured around two main presentations. 3ie will focus on why doing policy relevant IEs is so important and how to achieve it through design and implementation, while GRADE will focus on how the study design and methods help achieve the rigour that IEs are supposed to deliver.

This short film profiles the experiences and opinions of participants from a project in 2014. The project “Strengthening capacities for Impact Evaluation” sought to improve capacities for impact evaluation of public policies among researchers in TTI’s grantee institutions in Latin America. It was a collaborative project between the Centro de Estudios Distributivos Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS), at Universidad de la Plata, Argentina, and GRADE, a TTI grantee in Peru.

Three main activities were implemented throughout the project:

1. Impact evaluation courses at the basic and intermediate levels,
2. Mentoring processes guided by demand (a call for expressions of interest), by researchers specialising in impact evaluation and aimed at TTI grantee institutions interested in increasing their capabilities in this area, and
3. Two expert seminars in policy impact evaluation (IE).

The project’s achievements included:

1. Providing conceptual knowledge and technical capabilities for the design and implementation of impact evaluations in topics relevant for the region to almost 90 researchers from TTI institutions;
2. Generating capabilities for the design and execution of impact evaluation projects in five groups of researchers, from institutions with less experience, to undertake this type of research through mentoring processes;
3. Making state of the art impact evaluation research available to both participants via courses, as well as to a virtual audience through audiovisual materials disseminated through the internet (more than 400 views in YouTube – short version –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeJ1gpQ8JHg );
4. Inaugurating a dialogue between researchers and policy makers that is invaluable in understanding the determinants of evidence-based policy adoption and improving the links between evidence and policies.