Peer review

Peer-review: No - Open Access: Yes|https://www.qjia.hu-berlin.de/aims

In recent years, investment in agricultural research has slowed in many countries. Meanwhile, the research agenda has expanded beyond straightforward production and productivity concerns to embrace a range of poverty, equity and environmental issues. Squeezed between a stagnating resource base and growing demand for their services, research administrators and scientists have come under increasing pressure to demonstrate that investment in agricultural research remains attractive compared to alternative investment opportunities. The result has been a surge in applied impact assessment studies and rising interest in research evaluation methods. This paper describes the major conceptual approaches used for impact assessment, reviews the history of impact assessment in the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), provides an overview of guiding principles and current "best practices" in applied impact assessment reserach, describes different possible uses of impact evaluation results, and identifies areas in which further methodological work will be needed to address the increasingly sophisticated questions about impacts being asked by those who finance agricultural research and by those who manage and set priorities within research.

Socioeconomics Program

Text in English

0401|AL-Economics Program