CIDEC's Development Partnership Research Group has been taking part in the SSK project of the National Research Foundation of Korea since 2012. SSK is a project to enhance the relevance of social science research by improving its publicness and academic self-sufficiency, and by reflecting social needs in studies. The Development Partnership Research Group has the mid-/long-term research goal of devising a Korean paradigm of international development cooperation. Thus, it pursues a vision of establishing a global hub for development partnership studies.

The goal of the research into the 'establishment of comprehensive development partnership in international development cooperation' is to search for effective development partnerships and to apply this in Korea by classifying and theorizing various kinds of development partnership. Specifically, the first step is to conduct in-depth studies through the classification and theorization of development partnership by country, field and region. Second, data on development partnership of Korea and major case countries will be collected, investigated and analyzed. Third, the in-depth studies as well as data analysis will be used to develop a comprehensive partnership index (CPI) and to devise a development partnership strategy for Korea.