High-Stakes Quantitative Analysis

Context As part of a joint OECD evaluation of the international response to COVID-19, working across politically sensitive, high-visibility territory where findings would inform policy at a global level.

The Challenge The evaluation needed to synthesise complex, high-stakes quantitative evidence alongside qualitative findings, under close scrutiny from a politically engaged set of stakeholders. Getting the numbers right wasn't enough; the visuals and definitions used to present them needed to hold up to repeated stakeholder review and be genuinely persuasive to a non-technical, policy-facing audience.

What I Did I led the quantitative analysis in Stata, working through complex, multi-source datasets to produce robust statistics, then worked iteratively with the client through multiple rounds of feedback to refine visuals (built partly in Excel) and definitions until they were both accurate and clear enough to land with a policy audience. This meant treating the back-and-forth not as friction, but as part of getting the analysis genuinely useful, not just technically correct.

Outcome The analysis and its supporting visuals became central to a final report that shaped major stakeholders' understanding of the global COVID-19 response, feeding directly into policy and funding decisions at an international level.