NDI believes that evidence for how and why our programs work is key to supporting our democratic partners, capturing promising practice, and holding ourselves accountable for high quality democracy assistance programming overseas. In adherence with the highest professional and ethical standards, NDI believes that the best evaluation methods are those “best-suited” to answer the evaluation questions. Therefore, NDI uses a variety of rigorous and innovative methodologies to capture the quality, effectiveness and impact of our democracy assistance programs. These methodologies range from randomized controlled trials (RCT) in partnership with leading academic researchers, to participatory evaluations in partnership with local democratic actors. NDI also invests in internal, learning-oriented evaluations to test new methodologies and generate a repository of programmatic knowledge. Lastly, NDI’s programs are committed to ongoing data collection and analysis for monitoring and reporting progress to our donors, as well as for evidence-based program management and decision-making. Through its experimental research partnerships, methodological innovations and evidence-based programming, NDI contributes to organizational learning, advances academic knowledge and informs policy-making in the democracy assistance sector.