Public Policy Evaluation

This course is intended for students who intend to have career focused on applying data and evidence and engaging with evaluations, rather than executing evaluations. The purpose of the course is to introduce students to policy evaluation techniques and provide an overview of current issues and methods. The course is designed to make students good consumers of these techniques. This will allow students to use the results from policy evaluations to improve policies and decision making and hire/supervise the work of others who perform evaluations. Students learn how to formulate evaluation questions, build or analyze a theory of change, and design evaluations using appropriate methods, largely using experimental and quasi-experimental approaches. The course explores the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods, benefit-cost analysis, and evaluation of complex interventions. Students will apply these skills to develop a full evaluation proposal for a policy or program, grounded in cases from diverse settings.