10 March 2014

Thematic Focus: Collecting & Using Humanitarian Evidence

Publications:

ALNAP recently released a report entitled, Insufficient Evidence? The Quality and Use of Evidence in Humanitarian Action.  The authors aimed to answer the following questions: "What is evidence and what do we need it for? How good is the evidence that is currently available? How can we improve the quality and use of evidence? Does evidence get used by decision-makers?"  More about the report is available here.

The Feinstein International Center also undertakes research in order to "understand the role of empirical evidence in driving humanitarian assistance programming." FIC just published an updated version of its Participatory Impact Assessment: A Design Guide, which provides a methodology for more systematically "measuring the impact of aid projects on people's livelihoods."

To learn more about the attitudes towards and use of evidence by the UK's Department for International Development (DFID), see this recent study, which reports on the results of an internal survey, and this related blog post.

Two other reports look respectively at how to assess the quality and usability of collected data and the capacity of policymakers to use evidence.

Data:

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), an Open Access journal publisher, recently announced a revised policy to facilitate the sharing of data reported by its authors.  And here is a recent article in one of PLoS' journals by MSF on its data sharing policy.

Finally, OCHA just launched a new project called "Humanitarian Data Exchange," the aim of which is "to make humanitarian data easy to find and use for analysis."  A beta version of its data repository will go live in early April 2014.

Tagged Publications and Web Sites/Tools.




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