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2012 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 11,000 views in 2012. If...
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The Decline Effect
A couple of times recently I have heard colleagues back up some rather anti-scientific comments by citing a magazine article published in 2010 by Jonah Lehrer called ‘The truth wears off: Is there...
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Guest post for Africa on the Blog
This is my cat sitting in a basket. The basket is from Malawi, which is of course in Africa… so I figured its sort of tangentially linked to the theme of this post… I was really delighted a couple of...
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Adapt!
Over the holidays I read Tim Harford‘s book ‘Adapt‘. In it, he discusses how various tricky problems (from running a sucessful business to solving world poverty) are best tackled using an evolutionary...
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The enthalpy of aid
I have decided to continue my theme of exceedingly geeky analogies by today comparing international development to a chemical reaction. I don’t know if you remember when you learnt chemistry at school...
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Science and development – getting beyond the hyperbole…
I have a fairly short attention span so when I attend long international development meetings, I like to indulge in a little bit of conference bingo. For the un-initiated, this involves writing down a...
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Evidence synthesis – what has it ever done for us?
I have talked before about the danger of using results from single research studies to push for policy change. A more balanced view of the whole body of evidence can be gained by carrying out evidence...
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Community Driven Development – would it work in Vauxhall?
Community Driven Development (CDD) is an approach to development, often used in fragile or conflict affected areas, which aims to engage the community in the decision making process to decide how...
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Schooling does not equal learning
School in East Timor Worldbank photostream One of the major aims – and indeed major successes – of the millennium development goals, has been to increase the number of kids going to school. At first...
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Post 2015 high-level panel report
So I have just managed to read through the recently published report from the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons* in which they give their views on the post 2015 agenda. I found it a really good, and...
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The art and science of presenting synthesised evidence
In a previous post, I tried to persuade you that synthesising evidence is a good idea for development. But everyone knows that busy policy makers are unlikely to read 100 page long evidence synthesis...
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Chapter 2…in which kirstyevidence meets a randomista!
Ok, I concede… They do exist. I know that I have previously suggested that they are fictional but last week, at a meeting of development practitioners and policy makers, I met a real live randomista...
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Evaluation: using the right tool for the job
In response to my last post, I got a couple of comments (thanks @cashley122 and @intldogooder!) that were so good, I decided to devote a whole post to responding to them. Both commenters were...
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An idiot’s guide to research methods
I want to start by excusing the title – I am, of course, not implying that you are idiots. I have however been carrying out a lot of interviews recently and I noticed that many people – even some...
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Dealing with disagreement
At a training workshop I attended this week the facilitator argued that while being able to make a logical argument is a vital skill in life, we can all appreciate its limits by considering, when was...
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Chickens and eggs
I was listening to a radio debate the other day and the host attempted to sum up the trickiness of the argument by saying “ah well, it’s like the age-old question, what came first the chicken or the...
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Dealing with disagreement
At a training workshop I attended this week the facilitator argued that while being able to make a logical argument is a vital skill in life, we can all appreciate its limits by considering, when was...
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Improving on systematic reviews
A fast-track to blogging success in the development field is to pick a research approach (RCTs, econometrics, rigorous synthesis, qualitative research etc), ‘reveal’ that there are some drawbacks of...
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Higher Education – my two (well, actually four) cents
University graduates in the Philippines, via Jensm Flikr It seems like higher education is having a bit of a ‘moment’ in the development world just now. More people than ever are enrolling for...
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Guest post on Pritchett Sandefur paper
Readers, I am delighted to introduce my first ever guest post. It is from my colleague Max – who can be found lurking on twitter as @maximegasteen – and it concerns the recent Pritchett/Sandefur paper....
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