Accelerating Private Sector Investment for Asia’s Clean Energy Future
I'm here at the Asia Clean Energy Forum in Manila, Philippines, where more than 1,500 leaders from 63 countries are sharing their insights, innovations and lessons learned in our collective efforts to...
View ArticleMind the Gap: Strategies for Public-Private Partnerships to Achieve Growth
The world invests approximately $2.5 trillion per year on transportation, power, water, and telecommunications systems. How can public-private partnerships be used as a tool to develop sustainable and...
View ArticleThe Role of Public Charter Schools in Career Preparation
Far too few students have access to high-quality, career-focused high school education that can put them on a path to postsecondary credentials connected to high-demand, high-wage jobs. Charter schools...
View ArticleDeep and Wide? Or Wide and Shallow?
We cannot do development differently by adopting a different set of techniques. Change is political. We must engage with the process of change.
View ArticleU.S. Leaves Paris Agreement, so Now What?
There is ample evidence from around the world that technological advances, falling prices for clean energy technologies and the dynamism of entrepreneurs are all helping accelerate the process of...
View ArticleTranslating Research to Public Health Action
During a recent keynote presentation at the Innovation in Infectious Diseases Research symposium, I gave the following challenge: To really translate research to public health action, we need to...
View ArticleTo Make Progress on Housing, Break Down Those Walls!
High-cost cities and counties face an array of serious housing challenges. One solution? Local government agencies should focus on breaking down barriers between different agencies and policy domains...
View ArticleWant to Get Ahead in Your Career? Speak Up!
In the first few days of my summer internship at Abt, my department VP told me the best advice he received when he first started working – to speak up. After our meeting, I immediately doodled a...
View ArticleAgricultural Development: A Valuable Tool for Peacebuilding in Conflict...
South Sudan, created in 2011, fell into civil war in 2013. A new white paper argues that a bottom-up approach to development is one way to make conflicts such as South Sudan's less likely.
View ArticleCollecting Data When the Going Gets Tough
In March 2017, two days before I was supposed to leave for Northern Nigeria to set up a final round of survey data collection for an evaluation, two German expats were kidnapped from a village in the...
View ArticleSeven Ways to Use Blockchain for International Development
Blockchain is here to stay and we can expect to see it increasingly in emerging markets. Here are seven ways the technology is being used in international development.
View ArticleWhy a Research Strategy Matters in Preventing and Responding to Pandemics
The World Health Organization's Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework seems to have all of the right elements: It calls for sharing influenza viruses, surveillance, stockpiles of medicines and...
View ArticleYes, You Can Generalize from Experiments!
One of the main criticisms of experimental evaluations is that they are conducted under such special circumstances that their results may not apply to other people, places, or times. A new wave of...
View ArticleHow Can We Measure Housing Security? Suggestions for HUD’s New Effort
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Policy Development and Research has begun the work of developing a composite measure of housing security, a commendable and important...
View ArticleBuilding the Evidence Base to Solve America’s Toughest Challenges
The federal government sponsors hundreds of programs designed to solve some of America's toughest challenges. The most important question facing policymakers and agency leadership is this: what public...
View ArticleNo Time to Waste: Public-Private Partnerships, Greater Coordination Needed...
As population grows and urbanizes, and standards of living increase, so does consumption of goods and services, producing more solid waste.
View ArticleCan We Predict the Future? The Promise of Predictive Analytics and...
Can computer code help identify kids at risk of dropping out of school or predict recidivism among recovering addicts? This is the promise of using predictive analytics and recommender systems to help...
View ArticleAccelerating Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry in Southeast Asia
By 2100, Asia will likely see a six degree Celsius temperature increase, drastically affecting water availability, food production, and ecosystem function. In some Southeast Asian countries, rice...
View ArticleThe Need for Speed: How Rapid Cycle Evaluation Can Help Your Organization Excel
Piloting a new strategy for program administration or service delivery can be informative and support continuous quality improvement. But we should be careful to consider some key questions first.
View ArticleEvaluation Reports: Moving From Dusty Shelves into Action
Donors and evaluators work hard to generate evidence of what works and what doesn't work in development programs. But that evidence is not always used to improve programming. Here's a look at why and...
View ArticleNot So Fast: When Indeed Does a Social Program Need an Impact Evaluation?
A social program needs an impact evaluation when the program is ready for one.
View ArticleScant Evidence and Soaring Promises: New Research Needed on a Universal Basic...
A universal basic income (UBI) is a regular, substantial, and unconditional cash income available to everyone, irrespective of their employment status or wealth. Its promise is the end of poverty as we...
View ArticleThe Calm before the Storm: Getting Out in Front of Coastal Restoration
Recent hurricanes make evident the critical need to restore and protect our coasts - the last line of defense against mega storms.
View ArticleGetting to Reliable Information Quickly: The Role of Random Assignment
Programs that have gradually developed cultures that support rapid cycle evaluations can learn what works quickly and implement continuous improvements.
View ArticleWhat Have We Learned about Housing Recovery After Disaster Strikes?
The 2017 and 2005 hurricane seasons have many similarities, so we are revisiting findings from evaluations we conducted after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to summarize what worked in housing people who...
View ArticleGaming the System: User Experience for Governance
While much of the technical support in governance is poured into making a project robust and innovative, little if any attention is given to the users. User Experience (UX) methods can be a solution to...
View ArticleBullying is a Public Health Issue in America, Especially for Sikh-American...
The negative consequences of bullying has the attention of many federal agencies, community organizations and socially minded entrepreneurs who work together and convene to discuss new research,...
View ArticleThe Youth Boom: Strategies to Empower Young People Worldwide
The global youth boom is dramatically affecting the developing world, especially in Africa, where 10 million young people enter the labor market annually. How are young people being integrated into...
View ArticleWhat is the Economic Impact of Infant Exposure to Arsenic in Rice Cereals in...
Countless news stories and media coverage have been devoted to the health impacts of lead in drinking water. Now, a lesser-known issue, the health impact of arsenic in rice, is getting more and more...
View ArticleA Hands-On Approach to Challenging Myths about Homelessness
This month, with the release of new data on homelessness in the U.S., we are reminded that each data point in the report is a person and that everyone can do something about homelessness.
View ArticleStaying in Touch with Research Subjects Can Help Prevent Selection Bias in...
To combat selection bias in long-term studies, researchers need to maintain a cohort of at least 80-90 percent of those who originally enrolled. But this takes time, effort, training, and sometimes a...
View ArticleBig Data, Idealism, and Vaporware: Looking Back at Blockchain in 2017 and...
I've led an interesting life, but my work with blockchain in the last 12 months has been the most interesting period yet. Here's what happened in 2017 in blockchain and what I think will in 2018.
View ArticleNFL’s Carlos Dunlap Tackles Bullying and Promotes Literacy
Recently Abt’s Helga Luest interviewed NFL player Carlos Dunlap about his efforts to fight bullying and improve literacy. He began a campaign after he heard about a bullied child in Cincinnati who took...
View Article5 Insights on How Governance Can Help Build a Responsive Health Workforce
Abt Associates hosted an event in January to learn about ongoing global initiatives in building responsive community health systems and how they connect to governance and achieving universal health...
View ArticleWhy Don’t More Housing Voucher Recipients from Live in Better Neighborhoods?
More than a quarter of U.S. renters spend most of their income on housing. Ten percent of this group receives government housing subsidies. New research examines how housing vouchers influence where...
View ArticleBismarck’s Miraculous and Unfortunate Re-emergence: Social Health Insurance...
Otto von Bismarck unified Germany in the 19th century, using the health financing system to aid in the process. But what worked then for Germany doesn't necessarily work elsewhere today.
View ArticleHow Can You Analyze 12,000 Documents Quickly? It’s Natural … Language Processing
Federal agencies rely on public comments to inform their actions. However, sometimes the agencies are overwhelmed with thousands of public comments – too many for their staff members to read...
View ArticleUnconventional Storytelling Showcases Timorese Women Making a Difference
Local universities in Timor-Leste hand-picked 26 journalism students to participate as storytellers, capturing rural Timorese women making significant contributions to their country.
View ArticleWhat We Know About Getting School Partnerships Right
Schools and districts have long partnered with external organizations to deliver an extraordinary range of enriching programming to their students during and after the traditional school day. A growing...
View ArticleAdaptive Management – What’s in a Word?
Why is Adaptive Management so important to Thinking and Working Politically? And how do we overcome the challenges it poses?
View ArticleWhy Do We Spend More on Addressing the Effects of Childhood Neglect Than...
New evidence from Abt Associates highlights two particularly promising approaches to building parental capacity to provide a strong family foundation before neglect occurs: parenting education and...
View ArticleGetting the Word Out: How Can Formative Evaluation Impact Program Direction?
In the last five years, Abt Associates has used formative evaluation – which provides continuous feedback – to help the Conrad Hilton Foundation refine its efforts to address homelessness in Los Angeles.
View ArticleAsset-Building Model for HUD’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program Shows Promise...
In a policy analysis, I explore the implications of this research for the broader debate about how to help residents of subsidized housing increase their earnings and build assets and financial...
View ArticleHarvest Box: Building a Better Understanding of Likely Effects
What are the likely impacts of the new Harvest Box proposal? Drawing on existing literature, Abt Associates sketches a plan for formal evaluation of the feasability of this program.
View ArticleFive Tips for Going on Site Visits
For any social science researcher, site visits are an important method to collect primary data. Here are my top five suggestions for researchers preparing to go on a site visit.
View ArticlePredictive Analytics, Recommender Systems, and Machine Learning: The Power of...
Real-life expertise, highly seasoned caseworkers plus predictive analytics and recommender systems may be the secret to enhancing and supporting child welfare decision-making.
View ArticleHigh Expectations, High Support: A Closer Look at College Completion Programs
Experimental evidence from the evaluations of three career pathways initiatives found that they resulted in improved outcomes for their participants, including higher college completion rates.
View ArticleAchieving Universal Health Coverage: A Policy Perspective
To ensure that everyone gets equitable access to healthcare - universal health coverage - we need to work together.
View ArticleMapping Together: Community-Based Solutions to Boundary Challenges in Indonesia
Under the Millennium Challenge Account-Indonesia’s Participatory Mapping and Planning Projects (PMaP) 1 and 6, Abt Associates worked with more than 10,000 village representatives to map boundaries...
View ArticleThree Challenges for ‘Politically Smart’ Programming (And Me)
No matter which acronym you use, overcoming obstacles is crucial to the impact the politically smart agenda will have on development policy.
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