SPR: Analytics and Thick Data in Social Change and Human Development

Analytics refers to our ability to collect and use data to generate insights that inform fact-based decision-making. The volume of data available to analysts is ever-increasing as our lives are digitized. The ability to make sense of this deluge of information is critical for effective program design and evaluation. While these data are a useful starting point, they are limited. They often do not capture the interconnected factors of the social world by relying on proxy measures.

This course is designed to deepen your analytical abilities so that you can better understand complexity, place programs and policies in context, and describe how interventions interact and affect beneficiaries. These skills will give you the foundation for further analytical functions that are predictive and prescriptive. You will be introduced to concepts of ethnography to interpret human narratives as a complement to big data, which will make you a more capable program designer and M&E professional.