ABSTRACT
Although there is a growing recognition in the research and policy communities that the scale-up effect represents an important gap in evidence-based policy making, generating evidence on the at-scale effects of a program poses substantial practical and methodological challenges. In this chapter, we describe a new research-focused organization that helps to address these challenges and to produce evidence on the complexities of scaling up promising programs. The Yale Research Initiative on Innovation and Scale (Y-RISE) coordinates researchers through networks, conferences, and agenda-setting papers; provides start-up resources for researchers; and operates coordinated research initiatives. These research initiatives have two core features. The first is a program or intervention delivered in partnership with an implementing organization. The second is a research design that can capture the effects at scale. This basic infrastructure then supports a range of different research activities. A body of work on seasonal poverty illustrates how this approach to research can deliver a comprehensive base of evidence on the large-scale effects of a program.
