Are interventions based on USAID development hypotheses expected to have precisely the same impact on men and women? While hypotheses like those in the diagram about moving traded goods across borders are gender neutral, other development hypotheses included in a strategy may have different implications for men and women's involvement in export production, or their adoption of streamlined procedures introduced by a customs administration. For all development hypotheses that involve individual behavior, including responses to incentives, it is important for USAID to determine whether its expectations are the same for men and women, or, for some reason, differ. Where differences exist in expectations about how a cause-and-effect relationship will work for men and women, a CDCS needs to articulate that expectation, possibly in the form of an assumption.

A development hypothesis states what will occur if a particular intervention is undertaken, or a combination of several building blocks that are critical for bringing about a particular development outcome are put in place. USAID's CDCS guidance makes it clear that these propositions cannot simply be wishes. USAID expects development hypotheses to be grounded in evidence.

In the Development Hypothesis section of a CDCS, USAID requires a short narrative that articulates the hypothesized linkages between a CDCS Goal, each DO that supports it, and, in turn, the linkages between each DO and its supporting IRs and sub-IRs. USAID staff who have experience developing a Results Framework will recognize, on the right, the graphic devices that tool uses for expressing development hypotheses.

In a Development Hypothesis narrative, hypotheses are often written out as causal "if-then" propositions. Several such propositions laid out in a sequence describe a strategy’s "theory of change."

For example, USAID development hypothesis for realizing increased trade might be written out this way:

If maritime transport costs decline, the volume of trade in the target country will increase.

Working down to explain how maritime transport cost would be reduced, a Mission might write:

If port efficiency is increased, then maritime transport costs for exporters and importers will decline.

In turn, the Mission might hypothesize that:

If goods-handling systems at the ports are automated, then port efficiency will rise.

Laid out this way, each of the causal hypotheses that underlie a Mission’s strategy is both potentially testable and specified in a way that can be monitored and evaluated.

For this theory of change, would the Mission involved be able to cite references to demonstrate that its strategy was "evidence-based?" Absolutely. Over the past decade, a significant body of literature has emerged, based largely on multi-country regression analyses, demonstrating that results along this chain to be highly associated, making it likely, though not certain, that if USAID invests in a strategy based on this theory of change the results it expects will materialize.

USAID/Uganda's Tips for Producing Promising Development Hypotheses

• Good examples
  •  If USAID introduces RUTF (nutrition treatment) through the GOU’s IMAM and community referral approach to severely malnourished Ugandans in 28 focus, North, and Southwest districts, then these districts will experience significant, respective reductions in current wasting rates.
  • If USAID promotes certain labor-saving technologies, off-farm enterprises, or other methods for increasing decision-making and access to assets among smallholder women agriculturalists, then such households’ nutritional and livelihood conditions will measurably improve.
• Not-so-good example
  • Improved market opportunities for coffee will lead to increased incomes for farmers will it automatically? What can get in the way of that happening? Even if it is true, what does AID have to do with this?