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This IDS Bulletin explores recent evidence on integrated approaches in rural development. Since the 1970s, holistic and multisectoral programming has been based on the synergistic potential of achieving more through a ‘big push’ of doing lots together. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also suggest a greater need to understand and address interconnectedness across different sectors. Drawing extensively on a recent impact evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project in northern Ghana, this issue presents a series of articles on the challenges of evaluating integrated development. The articles explore the challenge of assessing synergy; the cost-effectiveness of integration; the value of mixing methods; and dealing with multiple outcomes on different timelines. This introduction concludes by suggesting a narrower testing of combinations of interventions in different contexts, and incrementally building the evidence base; rather than ‘doing everything together’, where a lack of impact combined with weak mid-range theory can limit learning about what works and why.

This is the notes on contributors for IDS Bulletin 49.4, 'The Millennium Villages: Lessons on Evaluating Integrated Rural Development'.

The use of mixed methods in impact evaluation often focuses on the triangulation of findings or using qualitative data to explain statistical assessments of impact (net effect). In this article, we argue for the benefits of combining and contesting ex ante etic-informed theory with ex post emic-informed grounded theory. Using the case of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) evaluation in northern Ghana, we highlight examples of where emergent theory led to a deeper understanding that valued how local people view change. In the context of an independent evaluation that set out to assess the MVP model – and with little scope for the evaluation to influence or adapt implementation – the theories of change created abductively helped fill a theoretical void. We argue that this is particularly applicable for integrated programmes where ex ante theory may struggle to capture the complex interaction of different sector-based activities, overlook unintended effects, and undervalue local perceptions of change.

This is the glossary of IDS Bulletin 49.4,'The Millennium Villages: Lessons on Evaluating Integrated Rural Development'.

This IDS Bulletin is the first of two special issues presenting contributions from the event ‘Impact Innovation and Learning: Towards a Research and Practice Agenda for the Future’, organised by IDS in March 2013. The initiative, as well as these two issues, represent a ‘rallying cry’ for impact evaluation to rise to the challenges of a post‐MDG/post‐2015 development agenda. This introduction articulates first what these challenges are, and then goes on to summarise how the contributors propose to meet these challenges in terms of methodological and institutional innovation. Increasingly ambitious development goals, multiple layers of governance and lines of accountability require adequate causal inference frameworks and less ambitious expectations on the span of direct influence single interventions can achieve, as well as awareness of multiple bias types. Institutions need to be researched and become more impact‐oriented and learning‐oriented .

This article compares key attributes, strengths and weaknesses of three different approaches to monitoring development interventions: the logical framework approach, participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) and feedback systems. Academic and practitioner literature describes how logframes meet the needs of senior decision makers to summarise, organise and compare projects. PM&E meets the needs of field staff to work sensitively with intended beneficiaries and support their learning and empowerment. Feedback systems appear to link the two, providing performance data for managers and creating incentives for implementing staff to focus on their intended beneficiaries. Feedback systems build on the rich heritage of PM&E and are compatible with logframes. They may help provide a manageable and effective approach to accountability that links the means and the ends of development interventions. Feedback systems are at an early stage of development. There is a lot to learn about how and where they work best.