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Bristol Ideas exemplifies how a not-for-profit organisation can collaborate with citizens, businesses, and local authorities to enrich a city's cultural assets, thereby bolstering its economic and social welfare. Owen Garling offers insights into the efforts and influence of Bristol Ideas, alongside his personal recollections of the city.
The post Bristol Ideas' impact appeared first on Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

Carson Christiano, CEGA Executive Director, outlines CEGA's top priorities in 2024, designed to expand the way we define and achieve "impact" in the evidence-informed policy ecosystem.Credit: Ronald Cuyan via UnsplashFor fifteen years, CEGA has supplied decision-makers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with rich evidence, insights, and tools they can use to identify cost-effective solutions for reducing poverty and improving lives. As we've matured, we have become wiser to the ways in which our efforts may — and may not — be driving meaningful and lasting policy change. In recent years, we have turned the microscope on ourselves, looking closely at our successes and failures and contemplating ways to boost the return on investment in CEGA's work. We are especially proud of the investments we've made to make evidence more cost-effective, more transparent and reproducible, and more inclusive.This year, we're re-committing to driving systematic change in the global development community and expanding our imagination of what our impact can be. Our priorities include:1. Launching new research initiatives in priority areas.As the world continues to contend with overlapping crises, there are several thematic areas where more evidence is urgently needed. CEGA faculty and staff are working to build research agendas and partnerships to support for new work in the areas of Gender & Agency, Conflict & Security, and Forced Displacement. Meanwhile, we are working to ensure that all of our thematic areas address the persistent threat of climate change, which in turn has exacerbated both conflict and forced displacement, especially for marginalized groups — and low-income women and children in particular.2. Building open science infrastructure.A key pillar of CEGA's work is to make evidence better. As such, we're constantly striving to improve the quality and credibility of the data, tools, and analytical methods used to make consequential policy decisions and drive large-scale social impact. This year, we're expanding investments in our Cost Transparency Initiative (CTI), which is developing tools and standards for rigorous intervention costing. We're promoting adoption of the Social Science Prediction Platform (SSPP), which enables timely predictions of social science research, and the Social Science Reproduction Platform (SSRP), which crowdsources and catalogs attempts to assess and improve the computational reproducibility of social science research. We're also excited to contribute a highly collaborative, novel effort to build a comprehensive, open-access, and searchable library of results from social science RCTs in low- and middle-income countries. By consistently documenting study design, intervention features and context, effect sizes, and measures of certainty and credibility, the envisioned Impact Data and Evidence Aggregation Library (IDEAL) will dramatically accelerate the translation of evidence into action by allowing users to quickly and painlessly access relevant information for a given set of studies. Once established, IDEAL will facilitate everything from qualitative systematic review to quantitative meta-analyses, making evidence-based decision-making easier for all across the development research ecosystem.3. Promoting the use of novel data science tools and approaches.CEGA's embrace of multidisciplinary and mixed methods has allowed us to generate new types of insights for decision makers, thus diversifying and expanding the number of tools in their toolkits. For example, the use of novel data sources (like satellite imagery and cell phone metadata) and data science approaches (including applications of AI and machine learning) by CEGA researchers allows them to paint a more complete or accurate picture of what's happening in a given geography or sector than they would relying on traditional data alone. This is particularly important in conflict or climate change-affected countries where household survey or government census data may be woefully out of date or insufficient for high-stakes decision-making. This year, CEGA is scoping new activities and partnerships that elevate the use of AI-based tools by researchers and policymakers for targeting, deploying, and rigorously testing a wide variety of global development solutions.4. Putting ethics and inclusion front and center.We're mindful of our position as a Global North institution working on challenges facing people in the Global South, and are deeply committed to driving both ethics and inclusion in this ecosystem. Our Global Networks program, which has brought over 70 scholars from East and West Africa to the US for semester-long fellowships in impact evaluation since 2012, continues to thrive and expand. This year, we announced a new collaboration with the Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) to create more training and mentorship opportunities for promising African scholars. At the same time, we're helping to set new standards for ethics in development research, for example by studying the practices and preferences surrounding the returning of research results to communities. And our Collaboration for Inclusive Development Research (CIDR) is examining — using both qualitative and quantitative methods — how the inclusion of African scholars can influence evidence-informed policymaking, and the obstacles that remain in doing so.As CEGA matures and the world around us continues to shift, we're striving to update how we define and articulate "impact" — not only in terms of our investments in research and evidence, but also our investments in methods, training, and research dissemination. In other words, we're beginning to measure success not just by the specific programs or policies that have been informed by CEGA evidence — although that is important of course — but also by the ways in which the entire global development ecosystem has shifted towards the effective use of evidence. This year, we're prioritizing efforts to better track and learn from our past experience and proactively integrating these lessons into our work.At CEGA, we're motivated by the opportunities that lie ahead and stretching our imaginations about the kind of impact we can have. We can't do it alone — we're proud of our collaborations with public, private, and non-profit partners, especially with those in the Global South, and look forward to seeing what we can do together this year (and beyond!) to make global development decision-making more cost-effective, innovative, and inclusive.Innovating for Impact was originally published in CEGA on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Research Impact is the ‘raison d’etre’ of the LSE Impact Blog. This review brings together a selection of posts exploring different aspects of impactful research featured on the LSE Impact Blog over the past year. Want to find even more? You can read a selection of posts on research impact and evidence based policy via the links … Continued

Universities are required to tell stories about the impact of their work on the wider world and these tales have a perfection that often elides the imperfect muddling through inherent to much collaborative work. Tadhg Caffrey argues a new emphasis on 'Imperfect Impact' can allow research communities to reflect on the challenges and opportunities of … Continued

[…] article has been previously published in LSE […]

Demonstrating a specialism for research impact is an increasingly sought after attribute for academics, research adjacent staff and growing numbers of impact professionals. Drawing on work carried out to design a course in foundational knowledge for research impact, Ged Hall and Tamika Heiden explore three dimensions of research impact expertise. Having a combined total of … Continued

This week we ask: what are the effects when authoritarian governments ban protests?

[…] and Managing Editor of Europp, Chris Gilson also explain why they believe that blogging is one of the most important things that […]

Health epidemics have a multilayered, long-standing impact on society as a whole, and an inordinate impact on women. Particularly in a country like Iraq where progress on women's rights and issues has been slowly gaining more traction in recent years, the coronavirus threatens to halt progress on these key issues and give lower priorities to women's concerns that are still vital during such a time of crisis. While more men than women seem to get infected with the new coronavirus globally--there is no gender-disaggregated data for Iraq--, the social impact of the virus in countries that already have been through the worst of the pandemic can serve as important indicators for Iraq.

The social impact of the coronavirus has had an uneven impact on women more than men in the first countries hit by the coronavirus in East Asia. Notably, in South Korea, women have taken on a larger burden than men in taking care of children forced to stay at home due to school closures, as societal norms more often place the burden for childcare on women. Not only does this put greater pressure on women who are in many cases already the primary caretakers at home, but it makes them more likely to lose their jobs as they are forced to divert more time to childcare. These societal norms also mean women are more likely to be exposed by the virus, as they are stuck in a caretaker role for sick family members and makeup over 70% of the healthcare sector according to a World Health Organization Report.

Women forced to stay home and work less in order to dedicate more time to caretaking also means that women are more likely to suffer from the economic impact of the virus, whether that means job loss or wage reductions. This means that even after the virus has effectively contained, women are more likely to suffer from the economic fallout than men long after the virus is gone.

In addition, in China, rights activists reported an increase in domestic violence cases, as lockdowns and economic pressure have increased tensions in many households. Particularly at the epicenter of the virus in Wuhan, China, activists reported a threefold increase in domestic abuse cases. The quarantine measures in place, while cases were at their height in China, made it difficult for activists to provide aid, and diverted police attention away from assisting women who suffered from domestic abuse. This disruption of support networks makes it more difficult for women to report domestic abuse cases and to get away from their abusers.

Social, cultural, and political barriers to women's participation in Iraq might lead to disproportionate effects based on gender. First, there have already been voices raising concerns that some families might not allow women who had tested positive for the virus to be quarantined, as more traditional culture is against women to remain unaccompanied. Not only would this present a serious threat to the health of individual women, but such refusals by conservative families to follow the recommendations of medical personnel may contribute to undermining the government measures to contain the virus. Second, women's representation in government is already limited in Iraq, and with a limited voice in the decision-making chambers of government, their gender-sensitive concerns will likely be less of a priority to Iraq's policy makers. And finally, Iraq's economic situation that was in decline even before the outbreak might further impact the poor economic opportunities already facing women in Iraq.

Beyond the loss of life and social and economic impacts on men and women in Iraq, the crisis is also an opportunity for the government and civil society to increase engagement with the most vulnerable groups, including women, and bring them in as a major element of preventing the spread of the virus. Societal norms placing women into the primary caretaker role in homes means they will have a greater awareness of how the virus is spreading, so they can report more accurate information. In addition, polling conducted in several countries suggests that women are more concerned with the spread of the virus than men. The government could take advantage of this trend by bringing women into the process of raising awareness and concern about the virus among Iraq's population.

Given the unequal impact, the social impact of coronavirus will have on women, the Iraqi government and civil society partners should prioritize making sure issues that impact women are not sidelined during the crisis. Support networks should strengthen their outreach efforts and make resources for women's health and domestic abuse support more accessible, ideally with government backing. It is especially important that the government prioritize getting out accurate information on the coronavirus and work with the support of tribal and religious leaders to encourage families to follow quarantine procedures for women who test positive for the virus.


Women participating in NDI's National Reconciliation Program prepare food baskets in Kirkuk to help their community cope with movement restrictions taken in response to COVID-19

Gender, Women and Democracy, Countries: Iraq

It is time to look at what really drove the differences in how the COVID-19 pandemic affected various groups of Americans and reduce the narratives that suggest the disparities are a result of one's race and ethnicity with other factors ignored and relegated to the background
The post Rethinking the Impact of the Lockdowns appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

As we have seen in other articles in these pages, social media has become a key driver of the widening gap in voting behavior between voters over and under 45 years of age. In this article, we look at how the media habits of old and young voters contribute to and enable this gap. Compared…

To ensure a sustained dialogue on increasing youth political and civic participation globally, it is imperative to create a space where young people can tell their stories and the impacts of youth-led efforts. These types of platforms help counter long-standing negative social stereotypes and motivate young people to continue to make civic and political changes […]
The post Generation Democracy: Amplifying Youth-led Impact Stories appeared first on International Republican Institute.

My new co-authored article reviews 168 victim impact statements from the Larry Nassar sentencing hearing and concludes that these statements show a victim voice at sentencing can improve justice.

Open-source intelligence has had a breakthrough moment during the war in Ukraine. Individuals are empowered to support Ukraine's war effort through their experiences and are able to document human rights violations, war crimes, and sanctions evasions to hold governments to account.
The post Open-Source Intelligence's Impact in the Digital Age appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Reflecting on carrying out impact evaluation as part of the The Research for Health in Humanitarian crises programme, Cordelia Lonsdale and Gloria Seruwagi, discuss common challenges faced in evaluating impact, particularly when outcomes don’t conform to expectations. The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme has an explicit impact mission: the research funded through the programme … Continued