EvalCommunity Tutorial

Using Elicit for Evidence-Based Monitoring, Evaluation, and International Development Research

A practical workflow for finding, screening, extracting, and synthesizing research evidence for M&E, MEL, evaluation design, donor reporting, and policy learning.

Tutorial Purpose

This tutorial introduces Elicit as an AI-assisted research tool for Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning professionals, international development practitioners, humanitarian teams, policy researchers, and evaluation consultants.

Elicit can help users search academic papers, review clinical trials, generate structured research reports, extract information from papers, organize sources, and support parts of systematic literature review workflows.

Authoritative Sources Used

This tutorial is based on Elicit’s official product pages and supporting external guidance.

1. What Is Elicit?

Elicit is an AI research assistant for scientific and academic research. It is designed to help researchers search, summarize, extract, and synthesize evidence from academic literature.

According to Elicit, the platform allows users to search over 138 million academic papers and more than 545,000 clinical trials from ClinicalTrials.gov. Elicit also offers research reports, systematic review workflows, source libraries, alerts, and API access.

For M&E users, Elicit can be useful when they need to understand what research already says about a development intervention, policy issue, evaluation question, theory of change, indicator, or sector problem.

Key Point for Evaluators

Elicit should be used as a research assistant, not as a replacement for evaluator judgment, methodological expertise, local knowledge, stakeholder consultation, or source verification.

2. Why Elicit Matters for M&E and International Development

Monitoring and evaluation work depends on evidence. Before designing a program, evaluation, theory of change, logframe, or donor proposal, practitioners often need to know what has already been studied and what the evidence suggests.

Common M&E Evidence Questions

What has already been studied?
Which interventions have shown results?
Which indicators have been used?
Which populations were included or excluded?
What worked, for whom, and under what conditions?
What evidence gaps remain?
What risks or unintended effects have previous studies found?

Elicit can help M&E teams move faster through the first stages of evidence review. It can support literature exploration, evidence mapping, screening, extraction, and structured synthesis.

3. When M&E Practitioners Can Use Elicit

Program Design

Use Elicit to understand the evidence behind a proposed intervention.

Example: What evidence exists on cash transfers improving food security among displaced households?

Theory of Change Development

Use Elicit to test whether the assumptions in your theory of change are supported by research.

Example: Does vocational training improve youth employment outcomes in fragile contexts?

Indicator Development

Use Elicit to identify indicators used in previous studies.

Example: What indicators have been used to measure women’s economic empowerment in rural livelihoods programs?

Evaluation Design

Use Elicit to refine evaluation questions and identify relevant methods.

Example: What evaluation methods have been used to assess community accountability programs?

Donor Proposals

Use Elicit to support the evidence section of proposals and concept notes.

Example: What evidence supports community health worker programs for improving maternal health outcomes?

Important Limitation for M&E Users

Elicit is strongest for academic papers and clinical trials. Many M&E and international development sources are grey literature, including evaluation reports, donor reports, NGO learning papers, government policy documents, humanitarian situation reports, and internal monitoring data.

For a strong M&E evidence review, use Elicit together with other sources such as Google Scholar, 3ie, Campbell Collaboration, Cochrane Library, World Bank documents, OECD iLibrary, UN agency repositories, ALNAP resources, donor databases, and local research institutions.

4. Before You Start: Define the Research Question

A weak question produces weak evidence. Before using Elicit, define your question clearly.

Use This Structure

Population + Intervention + Outcome + Context

Example:

Population: adolescent girls
Intervention: mentorship programs
Outcome: school retention
Context: low- and middle-income countries

What is the evidence that mentorship programs improve school retention among adolescent girls in low- and middle-income countries?

5. Workflow 1: Quick Evidence Search

Use this workflow when you need a fast understanding of what research says about a topic.

Practical Steps

Open Elicit.
Enter a clear research question.
Review the search results.
Add useful extraction columns.
Open and verify key papers.

Suggested extraction columns for M&E work:

Country
Sector
Intervention type
Target population
Study design
Sample size
Outcome indicators
Main findings
Limitations
Equity findings
Implementation conditions
Relevance to my evaluation

6. Workflow 2: Literature Review for M&E

Use this workflow when preparing a literature review for an evaluation report, project design document, donor proposal, or learning product.

Review Steps

Define the review objective.
Define inclusion criteria.
Define exclusion criteria.
Search using more than one research question.
Screen the results.
Extract data from selected papers.
Synthesize findings by theme.

Organize your synthesis under:

What works
What does not work
For whom it works
Under what conditions it works
Implementation barriers
Equity considerations
Evidence gaps
Implications for program design
Implications for evaluation design

7. Workflow 3: Testing a Theory of Change

Use Elicit to check whether the assumptions in a theory of change are supported by evidence.

Example Pathway

Entrepreneurship training for women → improved business knowledge → improved business practices → increased income → increased household decision-making power

Example questions to test assumptions:

What is the evidence that entrepreneurship training improves income for women in low-income countries?
What factors influence whether women’s income gains lead to greater household decision-making power?
What are the limitations of business training programs for women entrepreneurs?

8. Workflow 4: Developing Better Indicators

Use Elicit to identify how outcomes have been measured in previous research.

Example search questions:

What indicators are used to measure social cohesion in post-conflict communities?
What indicators are used to measure women’s economic empowerment?
What indicators are used to measure climate resilience among smallholder farmers?
What indicators are used to measure youth employment outcomes?

Adapt Indicators Carefully

Is this indicator relevant to our program?
Can we collect this data safely?
Is it culturally appropriate?
Is it feasible within the budget?
Can it be disaggregated?
Does it require sensitive personal data?
Does it measure change or only activity completion?

9. Workflow 5: Designing Evaluation Questions

Use Elicit to make evaluation questions more evidence-informed.

Weak question: Did the youth employment program work?

Better question: To what extent did the program improve employment outcomes for participating youth?

Even stronger: Which program components contributed most to employment outcomes, and were results different by gender, education level, disability, or location?

10. Workflow 6: Supporting Donor Proposals

Use Elicit to strengthen the evidence section of a proposal.

Avoid overclaiming.

Weak wording: Research proves this intervention will work.

Better wording: Existing evidence suggests that community health worker programs can improve maternal health outcomes when supported by supervision, referral systems, adequate supplies, and community trust.

11. Workflow 7: Humanitarian and Rapid Evidence Reviews

Use Elicit when teams need a fast evidence summary during program design, emergency response, or adaptive management.

Rapid Evidence Note Structure

Decision question: What decision needs evidence?
Evidence summary: What does the literature suggest?
Strength of evidence: Is the evidence strong, mixed, weak, or limited?
Context relevance: How similar is the evidence to our setting?
Risks: What could go wrong?
M&E implications: What should we monitor?
Evidence gaps: What do we still not know?
Recommended next step: What should the team do now?

12. Responsible Use Checklist

Elicit should support professional judgment, not replace it. Before using Elicit outputs in an evaluation, proposal, or report, check the following.

Source Quality

Is the paper peer-reviewed?
Is it a systematic review, impact evaluation, observational study, or opinion piece?
Is the methodology appropriate?
Are the limitations clear?

Context Relevance

Is the country or region comparable?
Is the population similar?
Is the intervention similar?
Are implementation conditions comparable?

Citation Verification

Open the original paper.
Check whether the cited sentence supports the claim.
Do not copy AI summaries without verification.
Keep a record of included and excluded papers.

13. Risks and Limitations

False confidence: AI-generated summaries may sound certain even when evidence is weak or mixed.
Missing grey literature: Many important M&E sources are outside academic databases.
Context mismatch: Evidence from one country or population may not apply to another.
Weak causal interpretation: Not every study proves impact.
Implementation gaps: An intervention may work in a study but fail in practice.
Inaccurate AI output: AI tools can make mistakes, so users must verify claims against original sources.

14. Suggested Exercises for EvalCommunity Learners

Exercise 1: Build an Evidence Table

Choose one topic such as cash transfers, youth employment, women’s economic empowerment, climate resilience, or education in emergencies. Create a table with study, country, intervention, population, outcome, method, key finding, limitation, and M&E implication.

Exercise 2: Test a Theory of Change

Choose one theory of change and test three assumptions using Elicit.

Exercise 3: Create an Indicator Bank

Use Elicit to identify 10 indicators used in previous studies and adapt them to your program context.

15. Final Output Template: Evidence Brief

Topic: Name the intervention, sector, or evaluation issue.
Research question: State the question investigated.
Search approach: List the search questions used in Elicit.
Evidence base: State how many papers were reviewed and what types of studies were included.
Main findings: Summarize three to five key findings.
Strength of evidence: Explain whether the evidence is strong, moderate, mixed, weak, or limited.
Context relevance: Explain whether the evidence applies to the program context.
Evidence gaps: Identify what remains uncertain.
M&E implications: Explain what should be monitored, measured, or evaluated.
Recommended next steps: State what the program, evaluation, or learning team should do next.

Conclusion

Elicit can help M&E and international development professionals work more quickly and systematically with academic evidence. It is useful for literature reviews, theory of change development, indicator design, evaluation planning, donor proposals, rapid evidence reviews, and ongoing learning.

The strongest use of Elicit is not to replace the evaluator. The strongest use is to help the evaluator find, organize, question, and compare evidence more efficiently.

TUTORIALS