From early outcomes to scaling

• In Event: From Early Outcomes to Scaling in Peace Education: Evidence from Burma

Proposal

Peace education programs seek to transform how individuals and communities understand and engage with conflict. Yet monitoring and evaluation frameworks often struggle to capture these changes in a timely and meaningful way. Activity indicators (e.g., number of trainings delivered) say little about actual transformation, while final outcome evaluations are resource-intensive and rarely feasible in fragile settings.

This presentation will outline why early outcomes — measurable shifts in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors — are essential for peace education MEL systems. Early outcomes represent a “sweet spot”: they are more meaningful than outputs, but easier to attribute than long-term impacts. Drawing on the Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) “Right-Fit Evidence” approach, the presentation will highlight three advantages:

Meaningful: Early outcomes are closer to the program’s ultimate goals than outputs. For example, measuring whether participants adopt inclusive attitudes or apply mediation skills is more informative than counting attendance.

Attributable: Short-term changes in targeted behaviors are unlikely to arise spontaneously, making them more plausibly linked to the program itself. Simple pre/post methods can often suffice without costly counterfactuals.

Responsible: Early outcomes can be collected at lower cost and on shorter timelines, making the data actionable for program iteration and adaptation.
Comparative evidence across sectors reinforces this approach. In education, classroom practice indicators have been shown to predict student learning outcomes. In agriculture, adoption of improved practices predicts yield gains. In peace education, early outcome measures — such as changes in inter-group perceptions, reported conflict management capacity, or inter-communal collaboration — can reliably signal whether programs are on track to achieve broader societal impacts.
This framing underscores that early outcomes should not replace impact evaluation, but they can complement it by providing timely, credible, and cost-effective evidence. They enable peace education programs to demonstrate results, build donor confidence, and make a stronger case for scaling.

The presentation will conclude by reflecting on how early outcomes can be institutionalized in MEL systems, including through donor reporting requirements, implementer practices, and researcher partnerships. The aim is to show how an evidence strategy built on early outcomes can advance both program learning and the global project of building more peaceful societies.

Author

• Stephen Gray