IBSS-Ex: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Effectiveness of Aid-Funded Programs: Spatial Analysis of Developmental Outcomes

该项目将审查旨在改善向人民提供基本需求的发展援助项目在各地有效性方面的差异。调查人员将考虑各国政府和国际组织的努力所产生的影响。自1950年以来，这些组织在世界各地发放了超过6万亿美元的非军事发展援助，其中包括自2000年以来的逾2万亿美元。这一探索性研究项目将为政策制定者、捐助者、从业者和学者提供可用于评估和提高援助效果和效率的新工具。从这个项目中产生的方法、数据和资源将以一种以前难以进行的方式进行目标评估。项目发现和产品将使分析人员能够更有效地评估特定项目成功或失败的程度，以及更精确地识别使计划成功或阻碍计划成功的本地因素。项目调查结果还将为捐助者提供关于如何更有效地确定和管理援助项目以实现其预期目标的更好信息。调查人员将收集和分析有关援助项目有效性以及相关背景因素的地方（次国家）数据。有关发展援助项目、发展政策、环境变化、暴力冲突、政治控制和发展成果（如人类福祉指标）等方面的地理编码的本地数据日益增多，将为该项目提供便利。研究人员将把这些数据整合成具有共同单位的可用数据集，他们将开发工具，使其他科学家能够整合其他类型的数据。这些创建新数据集的工具将缓解关于援助有效性研究的现有瓶颈。利用得到的数据集，研究人员将分析援助项目的意图和结果之间的关系，最初将重点放在世界各国的四个结果上：作为粮食安全指标的耕地覆盖率、种族间暴力水平、疫苗覆盖率和婴儿死亡率。本项目由美国国家科学基金会跨学科行为与社会科学研究（IBSS）竞赛资助。

This project will examine variation across localities in the effectiveness of development aid projects designed to improve provision of basic needs for people. The investigators will consider the impact of the efforts of national governments and international organizations, which have distributed more than $6 trillion in non-military development aid around the world since 1950, including more than $2 trillion since 2000. This exploratory research project will provide policymakers, donors, practitioners, and scholar with new tools that can be used to evaluate and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of aid. The methods, data, and resources emerging from this project will target evaluation in a manner that previously has been difficult to undertake. Project findings and products will enable analysts to more effectively assess the extent to which a particular project has succeeded or failed as well as to more precisely identify local factors that enabled or hindered the program's success. Project findings also will give donors improved information regarding how to target and administer aid programs more effectively in order to achieve their desired goals.The investigators will collect and analyze local (subnational) data on the effectiveness of aid projects as well as pertinent contextual factors. The project will be facilitated by the increasing availability of geographically coded, local data dealing with development aid projects, development policies, environmental change, violent conflict, political control, and development outcomes, such as measures of human well-being. The investigators will integrate these data into useable datasets with common units, and they will develop tools that will enable other scientists to integrate other kinds of data. These tools for creating new datasets will relieve existing bottlenecks in research on the effectiveness of aid. Using the resulting datasets, the investigators will analyze relationships between intentions and outcomes of aid projects, focusing initially on four outcomes in countries around the world: cropland coverage as an indication of food security, levels of inter-ethnic violence, vaccine coverage, and infant mortality. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.