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Contributions Jos Vaessen (JV), Maren Duvendack (MD), Hugh Waddington (HW) and FransLeeuw (FL) contributed to the writing and revising of this systematic review. JV, Ana Rivas and Ger van Gils (GG) contributed to the design of the review and the information retrieval activities associated with the review. In the quality assessment of selected studies, we distinguish between assessment of methodological quality, carried out by MD, Richard Palmer Jones (RPJ) and HW, and assessment of the quality of the theoretical framework of selected studies carried out by GG and FL. The meta-analysis was conducted by MD, RPJ and HW, with additional support from Jorge Hombrados. The qualitative synthesis was conducted by GG, FL and JV. Nathalie Holvoet and Johan Bastiaensen helped developing the theoretical framework on microcredit and empowerment. Ruslan Lukach contributed to methodological design. JV will be responsible for updating this review as additional evidence accumulates and as funding becomes available.

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Systematic reviews and meta-analysis have risen in popularity in international development to provide evidence on 'what works'. This paper reports the findings of a meta-analysis to assess the impact of microcredit on women's control over household spending to illustrate the challenges of conducting meta-analysis in the case of a diverse evidence base. We provide an assessment of methodological quality and present the findings of a meta-analysis. The results suggest that the effect sizes are small. Furthermore, the confidence that we can place in these findings is limited by the high level of heterogeneity within and between studies and the general reliance on nonexperimental studies and statistical analyses which are not reported in sufficient detail to enable confident judgement as to their robustness.

In recent years, debates on impact evaluation of development cooperation have flourished. There has been a marked increase in statistical impact evaluation exercises, most notably randomized experiments, and at the same time, many evaluations with a focus on impact have relied on alternative methodological approaches. The diversity in methodological approaches can be explained by differences in epistemology, characteristics of the evaluand and of the evaluation context. Broadly speaking there are two approaches: impact evaluations that rely on statistical design and/or multivariate analysis with statistical controls as a basis for attribution; and impact evaluations relying on systematic argumentation guided by some type of causal theory of change. Contribution analysis is an example of a heuristic framework that fits in the latter category and this article relates this approach to an evaluation of prizes awarded by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). It discusses the intervention logic underlying UNESCO prizes and the corresponding framework for empirical assessment that in part reflects the institutional context and constraints. Finally, we discuss how the evaluation can provide the basis for a full-fledged impact evaluation of a prize using contribution analysis.