Peer-reviewed article
Global Ambitions: Evidence, Scale, and Child Well‐being in El Salvador
Tomas Matza ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This article looks at how the growing demand for rigorous evidence and metrics in international aid affects the work of aid organisations. It draws on collaborative research with an NGO and a group of social scientists who aimed to improve child well-being in El Salvador. The author finds that making evidence meant different things to different people and was costly. This ultimately changed the NGO's planned intervention. The author argues this was not due to poor planning but to structural demands placed on global assistance, and suggests stakeholders should discuss the trade-offs between making evidence and delivering assistance.
Key points
- Experimental design and metrics have become more common in international assistance as donors demand rigorous evaluation and monitoring.
- Evidence-making was polysemic, meaning it had multiple meanings for those involved.
- Evidence-making was costly and ultimately affected the NGO's planned intervention.
- The outcome reflects structural evidence-making demands on global assistance, not poor planning.
- Discussion among stakeholders about trade-offs between evidence-making and assistance is suggested as a way forward.
Limitations
The abstract does not say which child well-being themes or intervention were involved, nor give details of the methods or findings. It describes a single case and does not measure the effect of any intervention on children.
Abstract
Experimental design and metrics have become increasingly common in international assistance, as donor agencies have demanded rigorous forms of evaluation and monitoring. This article contributes to debates about the effects of an "evidence-based turn" on interventions and recipients by exploring two questions: What constitutes evidence when it comes to everyday practices of aid at global scales? How are the goals of assistance affected? The article draws on collaborative research with an NGO and a group of social scientists who seek to improve child well-being in El Salvador. It shows how evidence-making was polysemic and costly, ultimately impacting the NGO's planned intervention. This outcome, I argue, was not a matter of poor planning, but reflects structural, evidence-making demands placed on global assistance at this historical conjuncture. Discussions among stakeholders about the trade-offs between evidence-making and assistance is a possible future route through the challenges described in this article.