As the scale of counter-extremism work worldwide grows, ensuring that our efforts are based on evidence becomes ever more important. Yet measuring the impact of counter-extremism programmes and policies is a complex process, not least because of the difficulty of assessing behavioural change, the connection between offline and online actions and the controversial and sensitive nature of the subject matter.

ISD’s research team includes highly experienced evaluation experts who design and implement robust impact assessment strategies for offline education programmes as well as online campaigns and interventions.

Drawing upon significant experience in identifying proxy indicators, ISD’s monitoring and evaluation team design innovative impact questionnaires and regularly trial new and original evaluation approaches. ISD researchers also have extensive experience in the evaluation of civil society projects and programmes in a vast array of national contexts, and can provide expert consultancy and evaluation services to civil society actors working in this space.

In addition to innovative offline evaluation design, ISD has been at the cutting edge of the evaluation of online communications campaigns beyond reach and engagement metrics. In 2016, ISD was a partner in the development of a unique social listening tool calibrated specifically to assess the behavioural impact of online information campaigns.

In addition to the results from ISD online evaluations, which can be read at the links below, we also seek to provide guidance to civil society organisations for how they can design and measure the impact of their campaigns. If you would like to speak to someone on the ISD team about evaluating your work, please email [email protected].