When Research Informs Public Action: A Toolkit to Rethink Monitoring and Evaluation

Public decision-makers are increasingly encouraged to rely on research-based evidence to design effective policies. However, in practice, scientific findings struggle to circulate beyond the academic world: they often arrive too late, are written in language that is not easily accessible outside academic circles, or are poorly suited to the concrete challenges faced by public actors.

At the same time, projects that foster dialogue between researchers and policymakers are complex to implement and evaluate: they must constantly adapt to shifting political contexts and produce diffuse or indirect effects that are not easily measured. Traditional monitoring and evaluation tools, centred on quantitative indicators, rigid frameworks and logical matrices, fail to capture these dynamics effectively. They are primarily used for accountability to donors, rather than for collective learning or project adaptation.

AFD supports numerous research projects aimed at informing public action. Observing this gap between researchers and policymakers, it sought to develop a monitoring and evaluation method that is more useful, more flexible, and better suited to these projects, in order to improve the measurement of their real impact and strengthen the influence of research on public policy.

The project consisted of designing a monitoring and evaluation method specifically tailored to initiatives that connect research and public action. It addresses a twofold challenge: tracking the real effects of these projects over time, and helping stakeholders in managing them more effectively in uncertain and shifting contexts.

Rather than limiting itself to a purely accounting-based quantification of activities or formal outputs (number of reports, workshops or publications), the method focuses above all on the changes the project has helped set in motion: have trust-based relationships been built? Are the knowledge outputs being mobilised? Are practices and modes of collaboration evolving? Underlying this is a threefold objective: to better understand what truly works by identifying relevant signals of change; to produce useful information for adjusting strategies during project implementation (identifying obstacles, reinforcing effective actions); and to improve the formulation of public policy recommendations.

This approach contributes to enhancing the quality of public decisions by promoting a more concrete, more practical, consistent, and targeted use of scientific knowledge.

The project resulted in a research paper, a technical report, and a monitoring and evaluation toolkit designed for development practitioners.

This method was tested on real-world research projects and co-developed with the various types of stakeholders involved, in order to capture their respective needs and constraints: researchers and public institutions, but also local organisations, civil society actors, and donors.

The approach is intentionally light and adaptable, allowing it to fit the time and resource constraints of partners, particularly in countries of the Global South. Local stakeholders are fully involved in data collection, interpretation, and the adjustment of actions. In practice, the method combines collective workshops, simple data collection tools (interviews, testimonials, observations), and moments of shared analysis. It draws in particular on the "theory of change", a tool that enables a team to clarify the expected outcomes of a project, the intermediate steps required, and the conditions for success.

The monitoring and evaluation method was tested across around ten projects in North Africa, Madagascar and the Sahel region, before being deployed across other geographies. It led to the following results:

• Exchanges between researchers, policymakers and local partners enabled the dissemination of findings and the sharing of lessons learned.
• Institutional and academic partners strengthened their capacities in monitoring and evaluation, policy dialogue facilitation, and project impact analysis.
• In several cases, the approach helped adjust strategies during implementation and improve the formulation of recommendations for policymakers. In doing so, it contributed to a more structured, better informed and more sustainable dialogue between research and public action.

This approach advances thinking on the use of research in public action by demonstrating that effective monitoring and evaluation can serve as a strategic management tool, rather than merely a control mechanism. It highlights the need to strengthen local capacities in monitoring and evaluation, as well as skills in facilitating dialogue between science and public decision-making.

However, some questions remain regarding the sustainability of the observed effects and the ability to scale up the approach. Further experimentation is underway to consolidate the methodology and adapt it to other contexts. The toolkit will also soon be deployed in the context of macroeconomic modelling projects, illustrating the approach’s strong thematic adaptability—one of its key added values.

• Stéphanie Leyronas
• Camille Tchounikine
• Annabelle Moreau Santos
• Sophie Salomon