For Practitioners and Policy Makers

IPA partners with organizations implementing development programs in order to evaluate their impact. Our partners are diverse and have included non-governmental organizations, commercial banks, government ministries, consulting firms, multilateral donors, microfinance institutions and think tanks, among many others.   IPA seeks research and implementing partners to study important policy questions related to poverty reduction using randomized controlled trials. 

Why Partner with IPA?

Partnership with IPA is an investment into an organization’s future; not only does it yield  insight for the partner into which interventions work and why they work, but it provides valuable experience in conducting rigorous evaluations.  IPA staff also strives to work with organizations beyond the initial engagement in order to facilitate integration of evaluation processes into operations as well as continuous improvement and replication of successful ideas. 

For example, IPA partnered with the Ministry of Education in Kenya to evaluate a school deworming program.  The results were so powerful that not only did the Ministry of Education scale up the intervention in Kenya itself, but IPA disseminated the evaluation results to a global audience, winning support and funding to help create Deworm the World, which successfully dewormed 20 million children in 26 countries in 2009.  

How a Partnership with IPA Works

No two IPA projects are identical, but there are common dynamics that occur throughout the lifecycle of a partnership with IPA: 

Projects often begin with discussions between the implementing partner, IPA and one or more Principal Investigator(s) to define what the partner wants evaluated as well as the indicators/outcomes of interest that will determine impact.  For example, a partner may want to know whether its program of providing conditional cash incentives for girls to attend school has a positive impact on education.  The outcomes of interest for the partner here might include school attendance, school performance and/or household well-being.

IPA and Principal Investigators work together with partners to design a randomized evaluation that answers important research and policy questions and is also operationally feasible for a partner organization to implement.  For more on randomized evaluations and their benefits to partners, see our frequently asked questions (FAQs).  Once a design has been finalized, IPA oversees the field collection and quality control of data.   Typically this is managed on-site by an IPA Project Associate or Project Coordinator who acts as the main liaison between the partner and IPA, manages field staff, oversees all data collection, supervises data entry and data management, and continuously updates partners and funders on research progress and findings.  Project findings are presented to partner organizations and the results are shared with the larger development and research communities in the form of working papers as well as shorter briefs and policy documents.  

If your organization is interested in partnering with IPA on an evaluation, please contact the Project Development team.