Lessons from Evaluation
Lessons from the Coalition
The Lessons from Evaluation series provides timely summaries of evaluation evidence to inform the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These demand-driven summaries, are authored by different Coalition participants and drawn from the collective evidence base of all.
| Issue 5: Gender Equality |
| October 2020 |
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This note focuses on evaluation lessons on four key dimensions of gender equality affected by the pandemic: women's access to health services, addressing violence, promoting economic empowerment, women in leadership, and transforming harmful norms. |
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Issue 4: The Use of Cash Transfers in Humanitarian and Development Settings |
| November 2020 |
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This rapid review of evidence from evaluations focuses on the use of cash transfers in humanitarian and development settings. |
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Issue 3: Climate Resilience and small island developing states (SIDS) |
| February 2021 |
| Drawing on a rapid review of evaluations, this note shares evidence about effective approaches to building resilience to climate chang. It aims to support the development and implementation of COVID-19 related support in Small Island Developing States, to ensure support is relevant and effective. |
| Issue 2: Gender Equality in Education |
| September 2020 |
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Synthesis of evaluative evidence about how to support gender equality within education systems. |
| August 2020 |
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A summary of evidence from evaluations about how to address food security challenges. |
Lessons from participants
To provide real-time insights for decision makers, Coalition participants are producing their own Lessons Learned notes and summaries of evidence from evaluations.
The Global COVID-19 Evaluation Coalition Secretariat, in cooperation with the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), conducted a survey of Coalition participants and partners in November 2020 to map the reviews (rapid up to systematic) and evidence syntheses directly related to COVID-19 response, create an analysis and overview of review efforts, to inform collaboration, avoid duplication of efforts and to identify potential topics for future syntheses. The findings are available here: Survey of COVID-19 evidence synthesis work.
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April 2021 - source: World Bank |
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This note summarizes lessons from the World Bank’s food crisis response experience and aims to inform the current response and its effectiveness to improve food security and nutrition. |
| COVID-19 and Aging Populations: What do We Know? What Can Be Expected Based on Evaluation Findings? |
| April 2021 - source: World Bank |
| This note draws lessons on how societies can reallocate resources and rethink services to better meet the needs of their aging populations based on the emerging scientific and policy literature and the evaluation findings. |
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February 2021 - source: UNEG |
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Addressing the COVID-19 Crisis: Lessons from Support for Public Financial Management |
| February 2021 - source: ADB |
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This paper provides lessons from evaluations of Public Financial Management (PFM) support by ADB, other MDBs, and the IMF, as well as lessons from research and analysis by other international organizations such as the World Health Organization. It draws upon experiences from past crises, and from previous budget support operations targeted at medium-term PFM reforms, emphasizing the lessons learnt. |
| International Finance Institutions' Support to the Deployment of COVID-19 Vaccines in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: 10 Lessons from Evaluation |
| January 2021 - source: ADB |
| This note provides a synthesis of key lessons draw from evaluations of ADB-supported projects and programs as well as from evaluations published by other international organizations which could support to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines are deployed and administered as quickly as possible around the world. |
| K4D Help Desk and Emerging Issues Reports |
| November 2020 - source: FCDO |
| List of rapid evidence reviews which include weekly summaries for three themes (health, demography and conflict/governance), as well as reviews on individual topics. |
| DEval policy brief - Economic integration into host communities in times of crisis |
| October 2020 - source: DEval |
| This policy brief suggests interventions to ease the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on displaced people livelihoods, in the short term during lockdowns and in the medium and longer term under remaining restrictions and a changed economic structure. |
| DEval policy brief - Protecting workers and firms in times of crisis: Key labour market policies for low- and middle-income countries |
| October 2020 - source: DEval |
| This note describes key labour market and social protection policies in LMICs during the three distinct phases of crisis response: Assistance, Reorganization, and Resilience Building. |
| DEval policy brief - Effective interventions to increase food and nutrition security in response to COVID-19 |
| October 2020 - source: DEval |
| This policy brief recommends effective interventions to increase food and nutrition security in LMICs as a response to COVID-19 based on rigorous evidence, and highlights impact pathways and specific adaptations in the context of the pandemic. |
| DEval policy brief - Evidence on COVID-19 Pandemic Control Interventions and their Impacts on Health-Related Outcomes |
| September 2020 - source: DEval |
| Robust evidence on the effects of health and pandemic control interventions can guide the cost-efficient and cost-effective use of related funds. This brief reviews the current state of empirical research. |
| Lessons for AfDB’s response to COVID-19 |
| June 2020 - source: AfDB IDEV |
| The African Development Bank has created a micro site dedicated to COVID-19, also available in French. Check out the Lessons Notes published specifically to support the Bank's response to COVID-19. |
| Responding to COVID-19: Lessons from Previous Support to Micro, Small, and Medium- Sized Enterprises |
| June 2020 - source: ADB |
| This synthesis note aims to extract lessons from the previous micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) operations of ADB and its development partners (including nonbank and private sector financial institutions) to help guide the design of future ADB operations in relation to the COVID-19 crisis. Lessons from past financing support provided to MSMEs to cope with the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2008–2009 global financial crisis have a continuing relevance for the ADB support that may have to be considered both during the crisis and afterwards. |
| ILO's response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers and enterprises |
| May 2020 - source: ILO |
| This i-eval IN-FOCUS issue looks at lessons that can be drawn from ILO’s response to the 2007-08 global economic and financial crisis and its impact on the world of work. It is part of the goal to provide impact-proven measures in an efficient manner that can help mitigate and overcome its long-term and negative consequences for both workers and enterprises. |
| Lessons from Evaluations: UNDP Governance Support to Countries in Crisis |
| May 2020 - source: UNDP IEO |
| To support the UNDP response to COVID-19, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has undertaken a review of lessons from past evaluations of UNDP’s work in crisis contexts. This paper focuses on governance support. |
| Lessons from Evaluations: UNDP Support to Social Protection |
| May 2020 - source: UNDP IEO |
| To support the UNDP response to COVID-19, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has undertaken a review of lessons from past evaluations of UNDP’s work in crisis contexts. This paper focuses on social protection support. |
| Lessons from Evaluations: UNDP Support to Livelihoods Restoration and Job Creation in Crisis Countries |
| May 2020 - source: UNDP IEO |
| To support the UNDP response to COVID-19, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has undertaken a review of lessons from past evaluations of UNDP’s work in crisis contexts. This paper focuses on support to livelihoods restoration. |
| Lessons from Evaluations: UNDP Support to the Health Sector |
| May 2020 - source: UNDP IEO |
| To support the UNDP response to COVID-19, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has undertaken a review of lessons from past evaluations of UNDP’s work in crisis contexts. This paper focuses on health sector support. |
| Lessons from Evaluations - Support and Financing to the Formal Private Sector in Response to COVID-19 |
| May 2020 - source: World Bank |
| How can the World Bank Group help keep the formal private sector alive during the current coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? This note identifies core lessons for the Bank Group on addressing the impact of the crisis on business and enterprises, based on evaluative evidence from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG). It particularly draws on Bank Group experiences in addressing earlier crises, including the global economic crisis of 2008–10, the food crisis of 2007–8, and the East Asian crisis of 1998. |
| 3 lessons from past public health crises for the global response to COVID-19 (coronavirus) |
| May 2020 - source: World Bank |
| As the public health emergency of the novel coronavirus spreads globally, there is growing interest in how the international community can support countries’ responses to COVID-19 (coronavirus). By analysing information from recent IEG evaluations of the World Bank Group’s response to public health crises, three lesson areas that shed light on what works and where attention is needed to deliver both an immediate and a long-term response to the current crisis were identified. |
| ALNAP Rapid Review of responding to COVID-19 |
| April 2020 - source: ALNAP |
| This Rapid Learning Review outlines 14 actions, insights and ideas for humanitarian actors to consider in their COVID-19 responses. It summarises and synthesises the best available knowledge and guidance for developing a health response to COVID-19 in low- and middle-income settings as at April 2020 |
| Responding to the Novel Coronavirus Crisis – 13 Lessons from Evaluation |
| February 2020 - source: ADB |
| As the world faces the daunting task of containing the spread of COVID-19 and treating the ill, past evaluations of the financial and technical responses from multilateral agencies including the Asian Development Bank to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Avian Influenza provide some lessons on supporting countries during and after the critical phases of the outbreaks. |
Participants’ resources on evaluating COVID-19
The Coalition aims to support collaboration and sharing of knowledge between participants. This list provides links to participant’s resources on COVID-19 evaluation activities.
| Boosting collaboration in Evaluation in Times of Crisis |
| April 2021 - source: ADB |
| In this edition of Evaluation Headlines, Véronique Salze-Lozac’h (IED’s Deputy Director General) and Megan Kennedy-Chouane (Head of Evaluation Office at OECD) talk about how evaluators can collaborate better to address the COVID-19 crisis. Interview by IED's Saleha Waseem. |
| Technical Note for Planning and Conducting Evaluations during COVID-19 |
| April 2020 - source: WFP |
| The objective of this internal note is to support decision-making processes about ongoing and planned evaluations (centralized and decentralized), ensure transparency and consistency of approaches, and clarity on the principles that should guide evaluation management during the currently constrained circumstances for evaluations other than impact evaluations. |
| Good Practices during COVID-19. IEO/UNDP and OECD/DAC Evalnet Joint Guidance Note for Evaluation Units |
| April 2020 - source: OECD / DAC Evalnet & UNDP IEO |
| Building on informal consultations in a series of knowledge-sharing exchanges, consultations and webinars, the OECD/DAC Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet) and the Independent Evaluation Office of UNDP have prepared a joint guidance note capturing good practices for evaluation units during COVID-19. |
| Evaluation in Crisis |
| source: European Commission |
| The European Commission DG DEVCO/ESS launched Evaluation in Crisis, building on the challenges brought in by the global COVID-19 pandemic |
| Evaluation During COVID-19 |
| source: UNDP IEO |
| Check out UNDP Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) page on Evaluating during COVID-19. |
Additional resources on COVID-19
A compilation of resources on COVID-19 covering a wide range of topics to help understand and address the crisis.
| Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security and Nutrition |
| June 2020 - source: UN |
| ALNAP’s COVID-19 response portal |
| source: ALNAP |