Evidence-Informed
Policy Making
Module 3
Assessing Evidence
[DATE & LOCATION HERE]
What will be covered in this module?
TOPIC 1
An approach to critically
assessing evidence
TOPIC 3
Understanding research
design
TOPIC 2
Assessing evidence
products
Sampling and inferencing in research
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The Law of Large Numbers
• LLN "guarantees" stable long-term results for averages of
some random events.
• E.g. you want know the average height of a group of 100
people. If you randomly choose one person, and measure
his/her height, your estimate could be very far away from
the population average.
• However, if you randomly pick 25 people and measure
their height, you will get very close to the true value in the
population.
• Important to remember that LLN only applies when a large
number of observations are considered.
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“Evidence-informed policy
is that which has considered a
broad range of research
evidence; it considers other
factors such as political
realities and public debates. It
is not exclusively based on
research. In some cases,
research evidence may be
considered and rejected.”
Source:
Authors based on
(Newman, Fisher, &
Shaxson, 2012)
Further Resources
•
‘Is your Evidence Robust Enough? Questions for Policymakers’ (Louise Shaxson, Policy
Press 2005)
•
Assessing the Strength of Evidence: A How To Note, DfID
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/291982/HTN-strengthevidence-march2014.pdf
•
Africa Check www.africacheck.org/ it is an award winning fact checking website
•
CLEAR- Regional Centres for Learning, Evaluation and Results strengthening capacities and
systems for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and performance management (PM), to guide
evidence-based development decisions www.theclearinitiative.org/index.html
•
Systematic reviews and impact evaluations for international development topics from 3ie:
www.3ieimpact.org/
•
A critical view of systematic reviews for development policy www.odi.org/comment/6283systematic-reviews-international-development-slrc
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