New knowledge on children and young people: A synthesis of evidence from the ESRC-DFID Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research

Abstract

In 2014 The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and The Department for International Development (DFID) set four groups of researchers a challenging task: to look across the more than 100 diverse projects funded through the Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research and synthesise and assess the evidence they had generated on a number of themes: children and young people; gender; health; and research methods. The resulting reports, Evidence Synthesis Research Awards (ESRA), are intended as rich sources of information of interest to a wide audience. The ESRA highlight the specific achievements and contributions of Joint Fund research – to knowledge about development issues, to methods and approaches to researching these, and to supporting social and economic impact. The Impact Initiativehas produced a series of summaries to capture these findings and their implications for policymakers and researchers to accompany the main reports.