Author Description

Development support must be able to prove its effectiveness. Impact evaluation is a way to generate this information. The thesis is about the design of these & nbsp; impact evaluations and how research methods can be combined to obtain credible evidence on effectiveness. It contrasts two approaches to impact evaluation design, & lsquo;randomistas & rsquo; (Does it work?) and & lsquo;realistas & rsquo; (For whom does it work, and under what conditions?), and distils seven principles for research design that create synergy between these two approaches. & nbsp; The thesis & nbsp; covers various development interventions. The main research concerns a Bolivian grant fund that supports investments in processing by farmer groups. To assess the effectiveness of this fund it was necessary to develop and test a new tool to measure organisational strength of these groups, called Tension Containment Capacity and apply a new method of data analysis, Qualitative Comparative Analysis. Interestingly, grants to the older, larger and stronger organisations proved particularly unsuccessful.