Designing impact evaluations: different perspectives

Debates on approaches to impact evaluation design appear to have reached an impasse in recent years. An objective of the international conference, Perspectives on Impact Evaluation, March 29th to April 2nd, Cairo, organized by 3ie, NONIE, AfrEA and UNICEF, was to bring together different voices and so work toward a consensus. A key session in this approach was a plenary in which experts from different perspectives were asked how they would approach the evaluation of three interventions: a conditional cash transfer, an infrastructure project and an anti-corruption program. The motivation for the session was that debates get stuck when they remain at the conceptual level, but that a greater degree of consensus can be achieved once we move to the specifics of the design of a particular evaluation.