Making a Difference: Mechanisms of Policy Influence

Development research is carried out to make a difference.  But researchers often know little about what it means to influence change.  This talk presents the findings of a comparative case study of 23 development research projects that tried to make a difference in public policy to try to understand the processes of change, the mechanisms at play and the role of research and researchers in development.

As Director of the Evaluation Unit of the International Development Research Centre, Fred Carden is an expert on developing innovative ways to assess the impact of development programs and the contributions of research to concrete policy and behavioural changes.  He has been with the Evaluation Unit since 1993. His work has focused on assessing the influence of research on public policy, developing tools to assess organizational and program performance, and outcome mapping — a people-focused approach that evaluates development programs based on how they affect relationships, activities, and behaviour. He has written extensively on evaluation, international co-operation, and environmental management. He has taught at York University in Toronto as well as in Tanzania and Indonesia.  Carden holds a PhD from the Université de Montréal and a master’s degree in environmental studies from York University.