Intervention evaluation is the comparison of different interventions, normally within a given cause area. However, some organizations may compare interventions across cause areas to decide where to give. Organizations that conduct intervention evaluations include GiveWell, Animal Charity Evaluators, Charity Entrepreneurship, Rethink Priorities, Happier Lives Institute, Future of Humanity Institute, and the Center on Long-Term Risk.
Related entries
cause prioritization | distribution of cost-effectiveness | global priorities research | impact assessment | ITN framework
I see this tag is largely unused, while “impact assessment” seems to have been chosen for many posts that could fit here (e.g. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/ZeFcfCAncT3jPAeht/clean-technology-innovation-as-the-most-cost-effective).
Two questions:
How do you think about when to keep tags separate or when to merge them?
How important is it for you that following a tag will have the expected results? In other words: if you have to choose, do you prioritise preciseness (e.g. two terms are not exactly the same >> let’s create two separate tags) or content discovery (e.g. this is going to relevant for people who click on the tag >> let’s make sure it shows up).
Concerning intervention evaluation vs. impact assessment, I’m not entirely satisfied with the focus of these articles, especially given that we also have entries on cause prioritization and cost-effectiveness. I’ll try to take a closer look and will post my thoughts later.
I mulled over this a bit, but I don’t have clear thoughts on what should be done. If others have suggestions, please leave them here. Otherwise, we can just leave this thread open and return to it in the future, when we have better ideas.
Thanks for raising this.
We don’t currently have an explicit policy: we just rely on judgment, on a case-by-case basis. Wikipedia lists some criteria, which we could adopt, though I think they just capture the considerations one tends to rely upon when deciding informally.
This is a useful distinction. In retrospect, I realize I was prioritizing preciseness over content discovery, and that seems to me the right approach, but I’d be curious if you or others have thoughts on this.