Bridging design and evaluation: making policy, programmes, and projects work

Policies, programmes, and projects ȏǮ‹�–‡”˜‡�–‹‘�•1ǯȐ aim to change the way the world works. They need careful design to have a chance of effecting change, and thorough evaluation to find out not only what the effects were, but whether the design itself was responsible. And central to a design that works and to helpful evaluation is understanding causation. The design of interventions and the evaluation should be connected by a common approach to causation. However, for much of the last sixty years, policy and programme design and policy and programme evaluation have been conducted as discrete tasks, attuned to different priorities, carried out by different people, using different techniques, and providing different results, ostensibly for the benefit of the same interests and rarely converging on the issue of causation. It might be said that policy and programme design and policy and programme evaluation are Two Cultures.