Methodological and conceptual challenges of evaluating the impact of development interventions

In the past years, doubts about the usefulness of development cooperation have led to an increase in rigorous impact evaluation. Many people, however, wrongly align ‘rigorous’, with the use of randomized experiments. This dissertation distinguishes three important categories of challenges in impact evaluation: delimitation, attribution versus explanation, and practical implementation. A reflection about these issues, and not so much a certain method, forms the basis for rigorous study. Within this framework the various sub-studies illustrate the following aspects: the limitations and the potential of randomized experiments; the importance of a policy-theoretical perspective in impact evaluation, and the importance of combining suitable methods.