Social change is often driven by project-level interventions. These interventions largely operate in isolation, with the lessons-learned confined to donor reports, episodic webinars, and academic publications. Meta-analyses and systematic reviews are methods that pull-together these related individual outputs and, through structured synthesis and interpretation, can advance the evidence base and inform decision-making.

This is a project-based course where small teams will complete a systematic review of an issue in social change that is important to them. This course offers team members an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the field. Each team will: Define a research question, Develop criteria for including studies, Review available evidence and select studies for the review, Analyze the data, Identify biases, Present results and “summary of findings” tables, Interpret results and draw conclusions, Disseminate results (should be listed in numerical order).

For the last activity, teams will consider developing an infographic, abstract, or some other means to effectively communicate the results (in partnership with the Meta-Lab). Finally, the teams will disseminate results through various media that can include blog posts, MIIS social media, and potentially for publication, for example in the Campbell Collaborative.

NB: This course will be delivered in the Sprintensive format with a lot of direction and oversight by the professor at each stage of the process. This is not a seminar.