haba na haba

US Government Looking for “Rigor” in Evaluation

dadakim — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:13:47 +0000

Mead Over at CGDev posts about a recent White House memorandum calling for increased emphasis on program evaluations from the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

One particular line resonated with me: “Attract and retain talented researchers in an office with standing within the agency.” Does this mean the Ph.D.s like me who are on the job market (where things are admittedly bleak) might actually land something — albeit working for the government and not the beautiful ivory towers about which we still dream? Seriously though, much as I think the work I do is important and that my training in how to identify causal relationships is valued, I don’t know that I want every agency in the government to be funded to do the same. Rather, I’d want the great majority of my tax dollars going to actually “doing” something rather than measuring how well something is done. Especially if the folks “doing” and the folks “measuring” are in the same office, we’re setting it up for one employee to blow the whistle on another’s poor performance. That might save us some tax dollars in the end, but I’d hate to play on that department’s softball team. Couldn’t we just have one agency that specialized in evaluating, or hire some external auditors on short term contracts?

Tagged: evaluation, government, government spending, mead over, omb, rigor

How does government spend our money?

dadakim — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:40:12 +0000

The International Budget Partnership posted a short documentary on creating awareness of the Kenyan Constituency Development Fund (CDF) and how it’s spent. Essentially, CDFs provide members of parliament (MPs) a fund to spend on development of their constituency (i.e. schools, clinics, etc.). A local activist organization, Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI) is prominently featured as the group organizing and training citizens to research how the CDF is being spent and ask questions when there are discrepancies.

H/T: Owen Barder.

For those who want to learn more about the CDF in Kenya, there’s a decent introduction in this brief paper by a [Kenyan] economist at the University of Connecticut. The American Political Science Review recently featured an article [older, ungated version here] that used CDF data from India to measure the influence of voter attachment to parties on legislator effort, and ultimately, policy outcomes.

Tagged: cdf, constituency development fund, corruption, government, Kenya, members of parliament, MP, oversight

HIV/AIDS Images and Links

dadakim — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 03:12:49 +0000

With the possibility of an HIV/AIDS impact evaluation study on the horizon and as I polish my job talk about the demand for HIV/AIDS interventions in Africa, I’ve been reading a lot about HIV prevention interventions. Here are some recent finds on the web:

Ugandan Insomniac shares this image from the Ugandan AIDS Vaccine Newsletter.

And, until I write a proper post about the AIDS vaccine breakthrough in Thailand, here are some to-read blog posts on the topic:

Tagged: AIDS, HIV, hiv/aids, image, links, thailand, uganda, vaccine

another american goes to africa to adopt

dadakim — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:28:41 +0000

I’m intrigued to watch the movie based on this trailer:

I’m convinced it’s a satire on white folks going to Africa to adopt babies. It’s nice to see Pauly Shore grown up and funny enough to do satire, or just humor that isn’t individually self-deprecating.

Tagged: adoption, Africa, film, globalization, media, pauly shore, pauly_shore

Semenya: Sex and Gender

dadakim — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:17:33 +0000

For weeks now, I’ve put off writing a post about [Mokgadi] Caster Semenya, the phenomenal young runner who won gold in the 800 m at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics with a time of 1:55.45 in the final. For those who aren’t familiar, Semenya is an 18-year-old runner from Seshego village, near Polokwane in South Africa’s Limpopo province who recently underwent “gender testing” to confirm she was eligible to compete in women’s events.

I have a series of issues with the whole story:

First, there’s a difference between sex and gender. Sex is a biological characteristic (itself not always deterministic), whereas gender is an identity. Semenya’s gender identity is not under dispute: she has always identified as a woman (or, more likely a girl — she is only 18). Her mother never questioned that she was a girl, and Semenya even has a birth certificate to prove she’s female. But major papers like the LA Times apparently don’t know the difference between sex and gender.
And, what is all of this saying to young girls about body image? Gregg Doyel, a columnist for CBS Sports is so sentimental about the saga, he’s called Semenya ugly. In the aftermath of the controversy surrounding her win, Semenya has gotten a makeover.
I also have issues with how identity more generally is being handled by the mainstream media. What does it mean to be Bantu? The New York Times said:

The Bantu, a group of indigenous South African people, may be more predisposed to being hermaphrodites but they do not always have obvious male genitalia, said Dr. Maria New, an endocrinologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. They are genetically female yet have both testes and ovaries.

Really? Is it any wonder so many folks in South Africa are claiming the accusations are rooted in racism? The racism cry doesn’t seem so far off, given the recent decisions about cross-country championships.
Finally, I worry about how all of this is affecting an 18-year-old woman who not very long ago was living in the village. It’s not just a question of whether her rights were violated, but a serious consideration of what this outcome means for the rest of her life. Where does she go from here? And who was supposed to be looking out for her best interest? The coach who didn’t tell her that she was undergoing “gender testing” but rather doping testing?

I’m no scholar of gender nor familiar with much of the background here, and I’m certainly not the only one throwing up her arms and saying WTF, so here’s a blogger who has lots to say, and another one who tells us why we should be uneasy about the whole circus.

Tagged: caster semenya, caster_semenya, gender, racism, running, semenya, sex, south africa, sport

this, that, and the other thing

dadakim — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 04:17:20 +0000

My posts have been rather short of late, mostly a compilation of links. This post will be no exception. I wish I could say my limited blogging has been a victim of whirlwind vacation adventures across the world, but it’s actually because I’m in the midst of applying to jobs in a downturned academic market. Blogging time has thus taken a hit. But after Labor Day…

It was actually two years ago now that I had posted about a young man in Malawi and his windmill. I continue to find his story inspiring and look forward to his forthcoming autobiography, especially after this review.
As the new school year is quickly approaching, Chris Blattman gives some advice to students.
There are some health problems that I think deserve as much, if not more, attention than AIDS; maternal mortality is one of them. From the Washington Post, I learned that in Sierra Leone, one in eight women die in childbirth (HT: duckrabbit). A couple of weeks ago, I learned something new from Karen Grepin’s post highlighting the frequency of post-partum hemhorrage in maternal deaths. More recently, she reminds us that America is not immune to maternal mortality.
Another bio I’m interested in reading after an interview with the author on PRI last week is Strength in What Remains. Easterly wrote a review about the book in the WSJ, which prompted my favorite blog post of the week: a response from a reader in Burundi:

Burundi is certainly very poor, and I am working with the landless Batwa, by far the poorest of the poor. But I am more struck by affirmations of human dignity than I am by human degradation, and I live quite safely here as a single woman. Public health in Burundi is what one might expect in a nation still emerging from a long civil war, but even in healthcare, there are bright spots; e.g., a well-functioning national tuberculosis plan.
Finally, the debate on poverty porn continues with a recent video from Doctors Without Borders and this post from Aid Thoughts links to a great video featuring Djimon Hounsou.
Tagged: burundi, easterly, links, maternal mortality, msf, poverty porn, strength in what remains, tracy kidder, william kamkwamba, windmill

this week’s Malawi links

dadakim — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:19:43 +0000

A friend who shot a film in Malawi releases a teaser trailer.

Well, I’m not exactly sure that this is in Malawi, but I’ve seen plenty of footballs (soccer balls for the Americans) crafted from condoms whilst in Malawi.

A blogger/doctoral student ponders the public vs. private delivery of social services, with an anecdote about a trip to Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe.

Malawian economists are calling for the devaluation of the kwacha.

Tagged: links, malawi

Giving to charity

dadakim — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:50:31 +0000

“You see, I don’t know what it’s for.”

HT: Duncan Green

Tagged: aid, charity, giving, humor, monty python, orphans

An ounce of prevention no longer worth a pound of cure?

dadakim — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:56:36 +0000

So much of the money for HIV/AIDS interventions is spent on treating the sick that I wonder how much we value prevention. Recent work modeling the impact of immediate availability of antiretroviral therapy on HIV incidence suggest treating the HIV-infected would curb transmission (see January 2009 issue of The Lancet). Mead Over at the Center for Global Development asks whether a new NIH-funded study to be conducted by researchers at UNC will have convincing evidence on whether immediate treatment slows transmission, and both of us agree that the sample the researchers will draw will have to be larger in order to have the statistical power to make a convincing argument.

A program that would use AIDS treatment to also prevent the spread of HIV meets both the objective to reduce incidence and the objective to take care of the sick; usually the debate is on how much to spend on one versus the other. Nandini Ooman from CGDev points out recent data from the US shows we are spending little on prevention, and reports show the general funding of research and development for HIV prevention have declined for the first time ever, though international AIDS assistance is still on the rise. Obviously, the increased funding is going towards treatment.

Treatment is expensive, and as of yet, we don’t know if it’s effective in curbing transmission of HIV. Certainly, the proposed UNC study is a step in the direction of testing empirically the external validity of mathematical models predicting reduced HIV incidence with increased AIDS treatment. It’s a rather costly way to go about testing a provocative idea, and I simply wonder if we could instead use that funding to carefully measure the impact of purely prevention-oriented interventions — and I also wonder how many such careful tests we could fund for the same cost as the proposed UNC study.

Tagged: AIDS, funding, HIV, hiv/aids, incidence, intervention, prevention, research, study, transmission, treatment

My favorite Sudanese expert weighs in on the ICC

dadakim — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:51:30 +0000

Michael Kevane, an economist at Santa Clara University, has spent a lot of time in Sudan. He is careful and thoughtful in a way that I admire. I didn’t have the chance to ask him at WGAPE this Spring his thoughts on the International Criminal Court’s i ssuance of an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, but he just recently wrote an open letter asking whether the ICC’s warrant for al-Bashir was as bad for Sudan/Darfur as Alex de Waal et al. have said it would be:

I am not sure that there is any basis to have a great objection to the arrest warrant against al-Bashir “now”. Sure one can object, but when objecting one should perhaps be clear that one is objecting because of a “gut” feeling rather than because one’s status as an expert means one has some secret knowledge or insight that others cannot access, and so one’s objection should have more standing than other’s “embrace” of the arrest warrant “now”.

Because I consider de Waal to have greater expertise on Sudan/Darfur than me, I was largely persuaded by his argument that the ICC warrant was a bad thing. (Well, I’m also not a fan of the Save Darfur groups raising money to raise awareness rather than actually help on the ground — and I’m particularly not impressed with some of the ways folks are raising money or how some are trying to raise awareness.) But I find the problem too complex to simply go one way or the other on whether the arrest warrant was a good idea – kinda like this blogger.

The problem is we just can’t know if something is a good or bad thing unless it happens and we observe the outcome. In social science talk, we’d otherwise be hypothesizing about a counterfactual.

Some [possibly] relevant links:

The exchange where this letter first appeared.
A snapshot of the Save Darfur vs. Alex de Waal feud.
Quantitative research on the ICC

HT to Chris Blattman.

Tagged: advocacy, alex de waal, darfur, icc, michael kevane, omar al-bashir, save darfur, sudan