Despite a spike in evidence on policy effectiveness in recent decades, evidence-based programming at scale is still rare. Evidence on the effectiveness of policy solutions is often context-specific, while the implementation of interventions is typically highly contextual and place-based. This represents a challenge for global development policy: how do we balance the need for context-specific evidence with the need to scale up successful programmes, and how can we help organisations be more effective at understanding and applying evidence at scale so that we can achieve more ambitious goals in future?
“People often don’t ask ‘what works?’, but instead ‘what is going on in this system?’”
Accounting for context-specificity. Participants emphasised that context is a vital part of understanding what makes for a successful policy intervention. Acknowledging the perspectives and motivations of different actors within a particular system is central to achieving impact, while evidence that addresses the concerns of local policymakers is key to securing user buy-in. Meanwhile, full understanding and consideration of the unique issues that may impact policy implementation in a specific context is vital if an intervention is to achieve its aims. Nevertheless, participants highlighted opportunities to focus on common findings across multiple contexts and to extract lessons that can be applied at a broader scale, with the implementation of a programme then tailored to fit individual situations.
Understanding mechanisms for change. Contributors noted that scaling and adapting successful programmes to different contexts is more likely to be successful when research provides a strong sense of the underlying mechanisms that drive impact. The importance of clarifying the aims and objectives of evidence-users in specific contexts at an early stage was also emphasised by participants, as was the value of holding meaningful discussions with local policymakers to map out what effective change might look like.
The value of local knowledge. The importance of working with local implementation partners, who understand the unwritten rules of a specific context and may be able to address problems closer to the source, was also discussed. Working with local partners was framed as a key route to making the most of limited resources and maximising efficiency, while a failure to do this was positioned as a cost burden. An additional benefit of working closely with local implementation partners was the potential increase in the number of relationships with evidence users that can be leveraged, thereby increasing the likelihood of evidence uptake.
Place-based implementation. Participants also discussed the importance of piloting interventions in specific contexts but cautioned that such efforts may not always reveal the practicalities involved with their full-scale implementation. This discrepancy can be mitigated by piloting at a larger scale, producing evidence that allows implementors to be agile, and understanding what capabilities and resources exist in a specific context that might be redeployed to support a new intervention. Contributors also advocated for the creation of a framework for sharing context-specific experiences and recommendations to assist those implementing similar interventions in other contexts.