Ex-Post Evaluations of Aid Projects: A Cost-Effective Approach

Annica Wattler and David Stadelmann

Journal of Development Studies, 2025, vol. 61, issue 10, 1579-1602

Abstract: Significant resources are allocated to targeted aid projects aimed at enhancing the socio-economic well-being of participants. Evaluating these projects is both time-consuming and costly. A major difficulty in these evaluations is identifying an adequate control group to accurately measure the treatment effects of the aid projects. We propose a cost-effective method for selecting a control group that can serve as a baseline for post-project evaluations. Specifically, we explore the feasibility of using existing secondary data sources, such as household surveys, to establish a control group that mirrors the treatment group in evaluation analyses based on interviews. We validate our approach using data from an educational programme in rural Ghana that targeted marginalized, out-of-school adolescent women. This setting exemplifies a highly specific aid intervention, common in many small-scale development initiatives. Our findings highlight the critical role of considering the project’s selection criteria when constructing a control group from existing secondary data. Furthermore, we emphasize the necessity of ensuring that survey questions administered to the treatment group match those used in the secondary data source to maintain comparability in evaluation analyses.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2025.2489556

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