Response to Blattman's Post on Why What Works Is The Wrong Question

Last week, Chris Blattman published a long blog post titled “Why ‘what works?’ is the wrong question: evaluating ideas not programs.” In the blog post, which was adapted from a talk he gave at DFID, Blattman argues that a) impact evaluations should focus on deeper, theory-driven questions rather than just whether a program works or not and b) researchers should design impact evaluations to allow for generalizability by paying attention to context and running multiple evaluations in multiple contexts. Read more