Methodology

Objectives

The Impact Pathfinder is an interactive tool designed to make available evidence easily accessible for donors, investors, financial service providers, policymakers as well as organizations which support the sector, such as think tanks, capacity-building organizations and consulting firms. It enables these stakeholders to make informed decisions about their financial inclusion interventions where evidence exists and to shape future learning agendas where evidence is missing.

The tool synthesizes a broad range of research on the impact of financial services like credit, savings, insurance, and payments, considering various contextual factors such as service design, socio-demographic characteristics, and macro-economic conditions. It draws from both experimental and non-experimental studies to capture diverse insights, differing from typical evidence synthesis initiatives.

The Impact Pathfinder introduces a new methodology designed to standardize the evaluation and synthesis of evidence across multiple pathways, research fields and methods. Unlike traditional methods, it focuses on the direction of impact rather than effect size. It is neither a meta-analysts or a systematic review. During the first year of the Impact Pathfinder, we will conduct sensitivity tests to refine our methodology and assess how adjustments, such as changes to study selection criteria, might impact the utility of the Pathfinder.

The objectives of the Impact Pathfinder platform are to:

• Leverage existing literature to identify those impact pathways revealed by the current evidence that link the provision of financial services and their uptake and use to intermediate outcomes (e.g., credit enabling greater opportunity, resilience, or agency) and to development outcomes (e.g. women’s economic empowerment, adaptation to climate change, promotion of jobs and entrepreneurship).
• Provide relevant evidence on influencing factors that may affect the pathway across uptake and use and the achievement of outcomes.
• Provide an assessment of the strength of the evidence for each pathway.
• Develop an interactive tool – the Impact Pathfinder – that allows users to see the impact pathways, understand how well evidenced they are, identify important influencing factors, and what knowledge gaps remain.

For each impact pathway from financial inclusion instrument to development outcome, the Impact Pathfinder provides an overview of:

• The strength of evidence (how much research is available and with what level of confidence can it be applied to our pathway) and
• The direction of evidence (does the evidence support a positive link from the instrument to the development outcome).

Limitations

Our evidence map was designed to provide an overview of existing research and includes several hundred studies that use many different methodologies, ranging from randomized controlled trials to qualitative research. We have used it to organize the literature, to synthesize broad trends, and to highlight research (often sparse) on factors that may influence how a pathway contributes to a development outcome or not. The evidence map is also useful for identifying gaps in the current evidence base. Meanwhile, it is important to note that the Impact Pathfinder is not a meta- analysis: we do not consider effect sizes or perform any statistical analysis on study findings. Neither is it a systematic review – this would require much narrower questions and a deeper, more critical engagement with the literature that is not possible, given the breadth of topics and the quantity of research covered on the platform.

Our methodology was designed to standardize the evaluation and synthesis of evidence across multiple pathways, research fields and methods. We removed as much scope for subjectivity and bias as possible, but some has inevitably remained.

Finally, our summaries and syntheses are based on a limited set of evidence. We cannot account for publication bias or for hidden methodological issues, such as p- hacking.

Future development

We are launching the Impact Pathfinder with a limited set of pathways with the intention of continuously growing and improving it. We will seek both user and expert feedback as we continue developing the platform after launch. Over time, we will add additional pathways, update the evidence base, refine the methodology, and partially automate the evidence mapping process.