Have you seen an impact evaluation result that gives you pause? Well, now there’s an institutional way to check on results of already published evaluations. 3ie recently announced a program for replication. They are going to focus on internal validity – replicating the results with the existing data and/or using different data from the same population to check results (in some cases).
It works like this. They have committed to funding replication studies of evaluations that are innovative, influential and/or counter-intuitive (you can check out the program description here). They are currently in the process of assembling a list of candidate studies for replication. If you have an idea for a study to replicate, you can email them at replication@3ieimpact.org by May 31. The list of potential studies will be reviewed by 3ie and their replication advisory board (composed of folks with a diverse set of backgrounds) to come up with a list of 10-20 candidate studies. These studies will then be open for folks to pick up through applications to 3ie in a process to be announced later (we will post a link when it comes available).
Another interesting thing about this announcement is that it looks like they did a review of existing replications. Their list is here and they count a paltry 15 replications – a bunch of which focus on the same paper. So clearly there is work to do. What do you think of this initiative? Any ideas on the process and the things that they should focus on?
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