The 2025 Study of Influential Evaluations: What drives evaluations to make a difference?
The 2025 SIE study of 140+ UNICEF evaluations reveals how timing, leadership, context, and ownership turn evidence into action—offering practical pathways to improve outcomes for children.
About
Evaluations matter—but only when they influence decisions that improve outcomes for children. The 2025 Study of Influential Evaluations (SIE) explores what truly makes evaluations shape policies, programmes, and systems, both within UNICEF and beyond.
Building on earlier studies, this edition moves beyond questions of technical quality to examine influence as an outcome in its own right. Drawing on a rigorous mixed-methods approach—including analysis of more than 140 evaluations, in-depth case studies, advanced text analytics, and insights from country and regional stakeholders—the SIE uncovers the conditions under which evidence translates into action.
The findings challenge common assumptions. Influence is not driven by external quality ratings alone, but by timing, leadership engagement, contextual fit, stakeholder ownership, and sustained follow-through. The study highlights practical pathways for strengthening evaluation use, elevates real-world influence narratives, and offers concrete recommendations to reposition evaluations as strategic tools for learning, adaptation, and change.
By focusing on how evidence travels from reports to real decisions, the SIE provides a roadmap for making evaluations more meaningful, more used, and ultimately more impactful—for programmes, partners, and children.
