This study explores how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) plans for and incorporates research evidence and evaluation into its democracy, human rights, and governance (DRG) programs. As such, the study focuses on both the use and the generation of evidence. On the use side, the goal of this study is to understand the extent to which research evidence is used to inform activity designs, identify obstacles to greater research evidence use, and draw recommendations and conclusions to better integrate research evidence into activity design. On the generation side, the study seeks to understand how activity design teams plan research, evaluation, and learning and ways in which USAID could improve evidence and evaluation planning. This research is intended to inform the DRG Center’s strategy to promote the use of evidence and to improve evidence and evaluation planning in the field.
