How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Big Data
The last category of existing resources for applying big data for evaluation was mostly captured by the comments of independent evaluation consultant, Michael Bamberger. He spoke of the latent capacity that existed in evaluation professionals and teams, but that we’re not taking full advantage of big data: “Big data is being used by development agencies, but less by evaluators in these agencies. Evaluators don’t use big data, so there is a big gap.”
He outlined two scenarios for the future of evaluation in this new wave of data analytics: a state of divergence where evaluators are replaced by big data analysts and a state of convergence where evaluators develop a literacy with the principles of big data for their evaluative practice. One problematic consideration with this hypothetical is that many data scientists are not interested in causation, as Peter York noted. To move toward the future of convergence, he shared how big data can enhance the evaluation cycle from appraisal and planning through monitoring, reporting and evaluating sustainability. Michael went on to share a series of caveats emptor that include issues with extractive versus inclusive uses of big data, the fallacy of large numbers, data quality control, and different perspectives on theory, all of which could warrant their own blog posts for development evaluation.
While I deepened my basic understandings of data analytics including the tools and techniques, benefits and challenges, and guidelines for big data and evaluation, my biggest take away is reconsidering big data for social good by considering the ethical dilemma of not using existing data, tech, and capacity to improve development programs, possibly even prescribing specific interventions by identifying their probable efficacy through predictive models before they are deployed.
(Slides from the Big Data and Evaluation workshop are available here).
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