The Streetlight Effect Is Hiding the Real Impact of Our Development Programs

October 17, 2018As researchers, we ' re often tempted to track data that are easy to capture —rather than searching for what we really need to know.A police officer sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks, “What have you lost?”“My keys,” the drunk man says, and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes, the officer asks if he is sure he lost the keys here, and the man replies, “No, I lost them in the dark alley across the street.” The officer asks why he is searching here, and the drunk ma n replies, " This is where the light is. "    This is just an old joke, of course, but maybe we are not too different from the drunk man in the way we attempt to measure the impact of our development programs.The report is a wake-up call regarding our own observational biases.As development implementers, we might behave just like this when we design our measurement and evaluation frameworks. We need evidence. We need to see results or impact. So we select indicators that are easiest to measure —standing out there in the light—and we shape our interventions around that framework.How often are we as researchers tempted to track data that are easiest to capture rather than searching in the dark for what we really need to know? Under the streetlight, we examine and document easy-to-see data when the information we really need may not be anywhere nearby or accessible to us.In reading the new Lancet Global Health Commissi...

Source: IntraHealth International - October 17, 2018 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: mnathe Source Type: news