Introduction

Abstract

When leading UK politicians commit to spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on overseas aid from 2013 and the main distributor of this, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), states its commitment to the “three pillars” of research, evidence and evaluation, surely there has never been a better time to be a development researcher? Yet while in the UK and North America there is increasing demand for research presented in the form of “evidence” or “key messages” and pressure on researchers to demonstrate their policy “impact,” what is the quality of the research that underpins their claims? The chapters in this volume recognize that research quality may be compromised by donor interests, short timescales, and limited reflection (Humphrey, 2007; Behague and Storeng, this volume). They present conceptual frameworks and methodologies that represent new directions for development research, alongside examples of good practice in other fields such as sociology and anthropology (for example, qualitative secondary data analysis and “revisits,” Bornat and Crow this volume). By bringing together scholarship from the Global North and South, the contributors challenge the assumed separation between developed and developing countries (cf. Humble and Smith, 2007). These examples are valuable to development researchers since there is a growing expectation that data will be available for analysis/re-analysis and that development policy will be based on evidence of all types, appropriately assessed for quality.