How can we meaningfully evaluate the effects and effectiveness of programmes to prevent or counter radicalisation?

There is broad agreement among researchers, policy planners and practitioners both that effective evaluation is essential if the field of preventing and countering radicalisation into violent extremism (P/CVE) is to advance, and that, despite a recent surge of interest and investment in evaluation, to date there has been neither the quantity nor quality of evaluations that the field requires.
This chapter surveys the evolution of the evaluation of P/CVE programmes and policies. It sets out a series of key challenges for the field: a common lack of clarity around programme objectives; difficulties for researchers accessing primary data; the problem of attribution, and challenges associated with demonstrating a negative.
It then describes and reflects on three ways the field has responded to these challenges: the development of more sophisticated evaluation designs; the use of theory-driven evaluation approaches to formulate clearer, more testable claims for evaluation and elucidate more clearly the logic of these programmes and how they are shaped by their environment; and efforts to foster more effective collaborations between policy planners, practitioners and evaluation researchers.