Research Support

We provide general research support to researchers (Northwestern faculty and students) wanting to conduct development research, in particular, but not exclusively fieldwork and randomized trials.

This research will often come through a collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action. IPA has conducted over 650 randomized evaluations to date, has 21 country offices around the world, and has extensive experience in implementing surveys, project vetting, and development and partner and stakeholder management.

We assist faculty and students with navigating the whole process of setting up and running research and help them liaise with a Global Poverty Research Lab cluster and IPA country office staff, who will manage study implementation.

We lead methodological research to create up-to-date and relevant resources that benefit the entire research community as well as provide direct support to Northwestern faculty and students who need help putting surveys together. We also develop programs and procedures for data cleaning and analysis. Lastly, we provide support so that data are publicly available, in order to increase the impact on both future research and policy.

Technology is at the forefront of many development projects, either for data collection or as an intervention itself. There is an unmet demand among researchers for a club resource that provides the core operations on top of which “innovation research” projects can be built.

We provide support for building technological solutions, apps, mobile platforms and websites that are used either for data collection or as a component of an intervention being tested. This component also would work well to involve students interested in thinking through entrepreneurial market strategies, i.e., how does one take successful ideas with evidence and bring them to market?