Many of the big conservation organizations use assessments to score protected area management effectiveness. Few of these evaluation approaches look directly at outcomes and how changes in these could be attributed to the existence of a protected area. Tools such as the Tracking Tool or RAPPAM are more assessing the management capacity of the PAs, such as adequacy of staff and budgets.
Nolte & Agrawal (2013 Cons Biol) test how well these types of measures link to the capacity of PAs to deliver real conservation outcomes. They use data from the Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) and look at how it relates to the effectiveness of PAs in reducing fire occurrence in the Amazon rainforest. They do it by applying matching methods, nowadays widely used to estimate PA effectiveness (Andam et al 2008 PNAS).