What is program success in ultra-poverty? An exploration of Randomised Control Trials (RCT) and social inclusion evaluations
Susan Goodwin et al.
What the paper says
Program success of anti-poverty programs is increasingly being measured by randomised control trials (RCT), which primarily track financial and economic indicators. However, such assessments tend to overlook analyses of social structures, relationships and norms detrimental to the life of program participants. We contend that evaluations that capture participants' own representations of transformation provide alternative indicators of program success, complementing rather than competing with RCT-based evaluations. We demonstrate how this can be achieved by contrasting the results of an RCT-based evaluation with the results of our study exploring social inclusion outcomes of the same ultra-poor program. While offering a useful riposte to the burgeoning trend in international development policy to employ RCTs en masse, this paper also posits a broader conceptualisation of program success, based on social inclusion outcomes.
1 citation
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.19 × 0.4 = 0.08 |
| M · momentum | 0.80 × 0.15 = 0.12 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.