Browsing by Subject "Statistical capacity building"
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Item Statistical capacity building in developing countries : essays on aid effectiveness, sustainability, and measurement(2022-08-11) Kim, Eun Young, Ph. D.; Weaver, Catherine, 1971-; Lentz, Erin; Findley, Michael G; von Hippel, PaulReliable data and statistics are indispensable tools for identifying policy areas needing attention, shaping appropriate policy interventions, and measuring progress, to make evidence-based decisions in all fields of public policy. In the world of global development, the demand for evidence-based decision making has grown alongside attention to the United Nations’ Data Revolution. However, many national statistical offices in lower income countries still face inadequate resources and capacity to generate, distribute, and utilize national statistics and data. In response to this problem, statistical capacity has increasingly become an important goal in global development, with multinational organizations, international NGOs, and individual countries stepping up to provide assistance toward building statistical capacity in developing countries. The three papers in this dissertation examine three interrelated aspects of statistical capacity building. The first paper investigates the effectiveness of foreign aid for statistical capacity building and the moderating effect of national statistical strategies, alongside other factors that may affect levels of statistical capacity, with a fixed-effects panel regression model. Results suggest that national strategies for statistics are a necessary condition for statistical aid to be effective. Shifting focus to the project implementation level, the second paper conducts a content analysis of project evaluation documents to understand whether and how statistical capacity building projects give consideration to ensuring the sustainability of their outcomes. I find that consideration for sustainability is insufficiently reflected in the contents of project evaluation documents, and suggest ways forward for future projects. The third and final paper looks at the issue of measurement, which is important in all stages of statistical capacity building. Building a risk assessment framework for global performance indicators and applying it to selected statistical capacity measurements, I identify several hazards and urge caution in understanding the potential risks of using these measurements. I also recommend that improvements must be made in the transparency of existing measurements to better facilitate the assessment of risk.