Attachments
3ie’s Humanitarian Assistance Thematic Window (HATW) aims to produce high-quality evidence to help inform policy and programming in the humanitarian sector. 3ie is supporting impact evaluations and synthesising evidence to understand what is effective and efficient in delivering programmes in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, including what can help to improve recovery and build resilience. We are funding studies that use innovative approaches, are gender responsive and equity focused, and adhere to the ethical standards in evaluation research with vulnerable populations.
How are we building the evidence base?
3ie-supported impact evaluations examine important questions related to effectiveness, ethics, gender-responsive equity, targeting, and sustainability and efficiency across various sectors, including nutrition and food security, multi-sectoral humanitarian programming and water, sanitation and hygiene. Currently 3ie is supporting impact evaluations in Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mali,
Niger, Pakistan, Sudan and Uganda. Besides the impact evaluations under the HATW, 3ie is also supporting high-quality impact evaluations in fragile and conflict-affected contexts on various topics such as community-driven reconstruction, peace-building programmes, cash-based humanitarian interventions, among several others (see page 4 for more information).
Table 1 gives an overview of where the studies are being conducted, the context and the nature of the humanitarian setting, the interventions and the key outcomes being assessed in these ongoing impact evaluations. These impact evaluations will subsequently inform the overall theory of change that is being developed for this HATW.
Key lessons
● Early and ongoing engagement is critical to ensure buy-in for the impact evaluation and to mitigate anticipated risks associated with study implementation in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
● Complex humanitarian contexts pose a challenge for the fidelity of the study design and rollout of the programme. Given the context, researchers should anticipate these risks and try to come up with alternative and rigorous study designs that can account for these challenges.
● Researchers should use existing administrative and monitoring data and collaborate with other agencies to complement their data collection efforts, since these are resource-scarce contexts.
This learning brief draws from the preliminary challenges and lessons from the ongoing impact evaluations under 3ie’s HATW. These include lessons on study design and methodology, study implementation, and engagement during the course of an impact evaluation. It provides a point-in-time reference for researchers and evaluation commissioners to anticipate and mitigate some of the challenges associated with conducting impact evaluations of humanitarian interventions.