Impact Evaluation for Agriculture
The CEGA-JPAL Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) sponsored a workshop on impact evaluation hosted by ICRAF in Nairobi, Kenya from January 23-26, 2012. The conference was organized in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and discussed innovative techniques in impact evaluation for agricultural development.
Participants included 60 social scientists and technical experts from across Africa, primarily from the CGIAR centers, who have been involved in the promotion of agricultural innovations in various countries. Through a mix of lectures, case studies, and problem-solving sessions, the workshop covered randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental methods (particularly instrumental variables), measurement of spill-over effects, and managing the risks of evaluation research (including ethics, attrition, and contamination of study design). The workshop also included an all-day STATA training for both basic and advanced levels. The facilitators included ATAI researchers, as well as senior graduate students from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego.
The workshop’s short-term objectives were to:
- Build understanding of impact evaluation as a tool for measuring the long-term effects of agricultural technology programs;
- Share knowledge and experiences from existing impact evaluations of programs that promote new agricultural technologies;
- Conduct country-specific clinics in which participants will design new evaluations, using administrative data from actual projects
For more information about ATAI, visit http://www.atai-research.org/
Instructors
Sam Bazzi (UCSD), Marshall Burke (UCB), Willa Friedman (UCB), Maryam Janani (UCB), Karen Levy (IPA), Karen Macours (PSE), Temina Madon (UCB), Chris Udry (Yale), Ruth Vargas-Hill (IFPRI)
