MY405      Half Unit
Research Design for Policy and Programme Evaluation

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Availability

This course teaches the fundamentals of contemporary evaluation research design, for students interested in pragmatic applications of evaluation methods in real-world settings. Students will be equipped with research design skills to be able to design and critically appraise evaluation research in applied fields such as international development, health, and public policy. Students are taught to develop a clear and coherent Theory of Change as a foundation for an evaluation. Taking a mixed methods approach, the course covers the major quantitative designs, including randomized experiments and observational (i.e. non-randomized) research designs such as instrumental variables, difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity design, matching, and synthetic control. It covers qualitative and participatory research designs and their contribution to formative research, process evaluation, realist evaluation, and theory-based evaluations. Examples from the fields of health, international development and public policy will be used throughout the lectures and seminars. Students learn to apply what they have learned, by working in groups on real research design tasks in seminars. The realities of designing evaluations for government and non-government organisations mean that resources are limited and ideal conditions are rarely met. The course therefore focuses on how to make pragmatic choices and deal with often sub-optimal tradeoffs in real-world contexts.
This course focuses primarily on the fundamental principles of evaluation design rather than the implementation of particular quantitative or qualitative methodologies, there are therefore no prerequisites required to register. It is complementary with most other quantitative and qualitative courses offered by the Department of Methodology. Given some overlaps in content on the quantitative side, it is usually advised not to take this course together with MY457 Causal Inference for Observational and Experimental Studies.

15 hours of lectures and 13.5 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

A Theory of Change in the Winter Term.

Angrist, J. D. and Pischke, J-S. (2014) Mastering Metrics: The Path from Cause to Effect. Princeton University Press

Bell, S. & Aggleton, P. (2016). Monitoring and Evaluation in Health and Social Development: Interpretive and Ethnographic perspectives. London: Routledge. 

Cartwright, N. & Hardie, J. (2012). Evidence-Based Policy: A practical guide to doing it better. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 

Glennerster, R. and Takaarasha, K. (2013) Running Randomized Evaluations: A Practical Guide, Princeton University Press.

Patton, M. Q. (2015). Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods. (4th Edition). London: Sage. 

Quiz (60%)

Report (40%, 4000 words)