Improving policy understanding by means of secondary analyses of policy evaluation

This paper is based on the idea that existing evaluations of individual RTDI policy interventions can be utilized to understand policies beyond the respective cases covered by the evaluations. We discuss a methodological approach for a comprehensive secondary analysis of evaluations. With this approach, existing evaluations can be used to learn not only about policy interventions, but also about policy performance and policy effects on the system level. © Beech Tree Publishing 2008.