Mind the Gap: Evidence Gap Mapping as the Critical First Step for Evidence-Based Decision-Making

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Global Evidence to Local Action in Central America: Understanding, localizing, and using evidence on education’s role in preventing violence

Proposal

Northern Central America (NCA) needs sustainable, effective solutions to youth violence and evidence-based programming that lets stakeholders clearly understand the impacts of their policies on education and violence outcomes. In response, a USAID-funded regional award currently seeks to create the demand for sustainable, effective solutions for youth violence prevention through evidence-based education programming across NCA. The project aims to engage key education stakeholders across the region, including youth, to identify gaps in their knowledge, execute focused search strategies for relevant evidence, and translate the results into actionable guidance for education programming and policymaking to ultimately prevent violence across El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The lead organization leverages its internal Evidence to Action (E2A) team to provide strategic guidance to put evidence into practice.

As a critical initial step, the project aims to present key finds from Evidence Gap Maps (EGMs), (anticipated publication date of September 2022, in each of the three countries to identify existing evidence and evidence gaps in violence prevention, especially affecting the youth population. EGMs highlight where robust evidence is available and identify remaining gaps in the evidence base, guided by a specific research question. EGMs can be used to facilitate the use of evidence by decision-makers, identify evidence gaps for new primary research, and identify existing high-quality evidence to drive policy and programming. During the session, the project will present the process it led over six months in 2022 in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to conduct the evidence gap maps, in addition to their initial findings. The project led a process to source and curate evidence in the region, including the systematic review cited in the previous paper. The project then conducted desk work over four months, gathering data, evidence, and grey literature in both digital and hard copies, responding to the questions defined in the search protocols. Only documents that met pre-determined search protocol’s criteria in a participatory process by key education stakeholders would be featured in the EGMs. The EGMs will serve as a tool for KES to influence donors, universities, or others to do additional research or to develop education interventions or policies, and they will also directly influence the development of knowledge products and technical assistance to facilitate greater uptake of evidence-based decision making.

Author

• JUAN CARLOS RODRIGUEZ, International Rescue Committee