Knowledge Bank

Designs

An evaluation design refers to a structure produced to determine the unbiased appraisal of a program’s benefits (Spiel, 2001) , and helps validate, measure and attribute ‘changes’ to a specific intervention. It is influenced by the method of choosing the counterfactual group or a comparable non-treatment group. There are broadly three classifications of Evaluation Design: Experimental, Quasi-Experimental and Non-Experimental Designs.

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• Difference-in-Difference

  The difference-in-difference design is a quasi-experimental design that calculates the difference in the before-and-after outcomes for the ‘Treatment Group’ and the before-and-after outcomes for the ‘Comparison Group’. Finally, it measures the difference of these differences in outcome indicators to measure the program’s impact.

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• Randomised Control Trials (RCT)

  Program beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries are exclusively selected into the ‘Treatment Group’ and ‘Control Group’ through random assignment within a population before the intervention, and changes in indicators for these groups are tracked over time to compare and measure impact.

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• Pre-Post Test Design

  Suppose a teacher wants to measure the impact of their teaching techniques on students' learning outcomes. A simple way of measuring the impact would be as follows: The teacher will conduct a test for students before teaching the class. After which,...

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• Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD)

  Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD) is a quasi-experimental evaluation method used to evaluate programs with a clear cut-off point based on an eligibility index that compares indicators in a given sample population immediately above and below the cut-off point to identify the impact of the program.

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