You may have heard talk about randomized evaluation as a way to understand the impact of development programmes.

In the first of a new series of the Development Drums podcast, Rachel Glennerster, the Executive Director of the Poverty Action Lab at MIT, explains what we can learn from randomization.  She explains why randomization is an important tool in rigorous evaluation, and why it should be an important part of our evaluation toolkit. She also addresses the main objections to randomisation.

You can listen to Development Drums on your computer at the website (http://developmentdrums.org) or download it (from here) to your MP3 player to listen to in the gym or on the train.  You can subscribe to Development Drums on iTunes, free of charge (search for “Development Drums” in the iTunes store).   You can also join the Development Drums facebook group to put your questions to future guests.

In the next edition of Development Drums I shall be talking to Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman about their book, Enough: Why The World’s Poor Starve In An Age of Plenty.