Jennifer Rogla, Ph.D.
jrogla@gmail.com
Alumna
University of Southern California
Year of PhD: 2020
City: Denver, Colorado
Country: United States
About Me:
I am the Global Director of Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) at the iDE Global Headquarters. I ead these four functional area at iDE globally in this Senior Director role by leading our global measurement strategy across our work in sectors like agriculture, climate resilience, water, sanitation, hygiene, gender equity, and market systems development. I oversee strategic initiatives to ensure iDE's rigorous measurement efforts are also inclusive, participatory, and ethical and support MERL staff across iDE countries to implement these efforts. I completed my Ph.D. as a Provost's Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) in Political Science and International Relations in December 2020, with previous bachelor’s and master’s degrees specializing in Psychology and Anthropology from USC and the University of Chicago, respectively. I have additionally completed two Graduate Certificates: Social Science Research Methods, and International Policy & Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. My expertise is in international development measurement and evaluation, the political economy of development evaluation, and the role and power of local actors in foreign-funded projects.
I was awarded a U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to conduct fieldwork in Costa Rica, hosted by CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza), and a USC Research Enhancement Fellowship for fieldwork in Mauritius. I have served as a Consultant at the World Bank Development Impact Evaluation (DIME) unit in the Development Research Group, and the Rio de Janeiro Centro de Operações.
To get in touch, please submit the Contact Form on my website.
Research Interests
Development
Foreign Aid
Comparative Political Institutions
Research Methods & Research Design
Political Economy
Public Policy
Aid Effectiveness Measurements
Aid Evaluation Politics
Local Actor Roles
Politics Of Development
International Development Institutions
Multilateral Development Banks
Foreign Aid
Economic Development
Human Development
Grassroots Organization /organizing
Mentorship
International Political Economy
Comparative Political Economy
Comparative Politics
Measurement
Comparative Public Policy
International Cooperation
World Bank
International Relations
Countries of Interest
Costa Rica
Mauritius
Honduras
Ghana
Zambia
Mozambique
Cambodia
Vietnam
Bangladesh
Ethiopia
My Research:
My expertise revolves around the politics of development and foreign aid, including development and aid effectiveness measurements. I have worked in three main areas: 1) the role of local actors in development projects and the relationship between their incentives and the sustainability of project outcomes, 2) developing a new measurement of project outcomes based on institutions, 3) determining biases in project evaluation at bilateral and multilateral aid agencies. My second area of expertise is in social science research design. I also have published and am passionate about properly navigating the ethics of human subjects research.
Publications:
Journal Articles:
Qualitative research and evaluation is often described as an art rather than a science. This intangible nature has left many programme teams feeling uncertain about how to justify and use qualitative forms of assessment in their monitoring, evaluation, and learning practice. Existing guidance is theoretically based and often focused on applications in the Global North. Building on an expressed need for guidance from a community of practice in Asia and the Pacific, this collaborative action research process aimed to create practical and tested guidance for programme teams. The analysis was conducted as part of a Cambodia-based sanitation programme assessment. Drawing from literature and the collaborative process, we propose a set of six principles to guide insightful, practical, and robust qualitative assessments. We provide examples regarding how the principles can be used to plan, conduct, and review qualitative assessments with a goal to strengthen the future use of qualitative tools in programming.
Book Chapters:
What are the main ethical concerns when working with human subjects and how do we navigate them? This chapter is meant to both guide researchers to answer these two questions but also encourage further reflection on them in the context of your studies. In Part I, I identify some of the main ethical concerns when working with informants. In Part II, I discuss how to address these concerns during the research design process, including choosing your method, instruments, country case, and sample. This will include an integrated discussion on including safeguards to avoid exploiting your participants. In Part III, I give guidance on navigating formal ethics approval processes, including planning your recruitment strategy and how to assess risks, and determine any additional ethics requirements you are subject to in other countries and indigenous lands. In Part IV, I discuss ethics in the field, such as recruitment, how to think through the issue of researcher positionality, exceptions to confidentiality, and the ethics of website/social media posts about your research. Lastly, in Part V, I discuss some final reminders when describing your results to reinforce informant protections.