Search results

Assessing the transferability of lessons from social research or evaluation continues to raise challenges. Efforts to identify transferable lessons can be based on two different forms of argumentation. The first draws upon statistics and causal inferences. The second involves constructing a reasoned case based on weighing up different data collected along the causal chain from designing to delivery. Both approaches benefit from designing research based upon existing evidence and ensuring that the descriptions of the programme, context, and intended beneficiaries are sufficiently rich. Identifying transferable lessons should not be thought of as a one-off event but involves contributing to the iterative and learning of a scientific community. To understand the circumstances under which findings can be confidently transferred, we need to understand: (1) How far and why outcomes of interest have multiple, interacting and fluctuating causes. (2) The program design and implementation capacity. (3) Prior knowledge and causal landscapes (and how far these are included in the theory of change). (4) New and relevant knowledge; what can we learn in our 'disputatious community of truth seekers'.

This article discusses an approach to managing the evaluation of complex interventions. Complex interventions pose significant challenges to the role and conduct of evaluations. In particular, they combine with reflexive learning and change to produce significant uncertainties making it hard to describe in advance what the intervention will do or what the outcomes might be. These uncertainties vary in nature and addressing these uncertainties leads to different evaluation approaches. That such evaluations often take place in 'real time' and have a strong formative dimension adds to the challenge. This article proposes a way of approaching this problem by incorporating the concepts of uncertainty and complexity into a Theory of Change-based approach.

In the summer of 1998 the National Health Service (NHS) Confederation in the UK used the opportunity provided by the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the NHS to engage in an exercise designed to stimulate thinking about the future of health services in Britain. A key part of this involved the creation of two possible future environments of the NHS. These became known as "the Madingley Scenarios". In this article, the context of this work is briefly outlined before describing the main drivers that are shaping this environment (technology and information, new power structures, the changing relat ion ship with the living environment, and the effect of social and cultural change). The scenarios themselves are then outlined followed by some reflections on the value of this work in healthcare and beyond.

This state-of-the-art book examines the development of performance audit, drawing on the experience in a number of different countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The expert contributors identify the trajectory of performance audit, examine how it is conducted and consider what it is contributing to effective government. They conclude that, in the face of new challenges, performance auditors should focus both on their core responsibilities to ensure accountability, and continue to develop more insightful and sophisticated approache

Knowledge grows as ideas are tested against each other. Agreement is not resolved simply by naming concepts but in the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. There are many echoes of these debates in The Evidence Book. The contributors make claims for both practitioner wisdom and the voice of experience. Against this is posed the authority of experimental science and the randomized controlled trial

Despite previous research, the field of counter-violent-extremism has not benefited significantly from evaluation. By comparison, and despite a number of challenges, the evidence-based healthcare movement has an established track record of using evaluation to develop practice. We seek lessons from the evidence-based healthcare movement about what it might take to develop evaluation capacity in the emerging field of counter-violent-extremism. Based on this, we offer a framework for measurement in counter-violent-extremism: the 'Violent Extremism Evaluation Measurement Framework'. We map out states and manifestations associated with violent extremism and radicalisation, then suggest how to measure levels and changes in relevant attributes.