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  • Right or Wrong? What values inform modern impact evaluation?

    The aim of this event was to open up the debate on ethics and explore how it can become more relevant to the field of impact evaluation.
    Resource
  • Realist Evaluation Workshop

    The focus of this one-day workshop was to build practical skills to conduct a realist evaluation for international development projects and programmes. The rapidly changing context of development assistance in recent years combined wit
    Resource
  • Week 35: What is Visionary Evaluation?

    Today we start a series on "visionary evaluation" - the theme of the 2014 American Evaluation Association conference in October.
    Blog
  • Week 36: Systems thinking

    This is #2 in our series on visionary evaluation. This year’s AEA Conference theme is visionary evaluation – systems thinking, equity and sustainability.  Which begs the question what is systems thinking?
    Blog
  • Week 37: Why is equity so important in evaluation?

    This is #3 in our series on visionary evaluation.  
    Blog
  • Week 38: Addressing sustainability in evaluation

    This year’s AEA theme of visionary evaluation challenges evaluators to consider how their work can contribute to a sustainable future.  In this week’s blog post, we’ve asked Will Allen for advice about how evaluations can address susta
    Blog
  • Week 40: Visionary Evaluation AEA 2014 song

    To celebrate the start of the 2014 conference of the American Evaluation Association, we're delighted to be able to share the lyrics and music of the Visionary Evaluation AEA 2014 song to make it easier to sing along during and after the co
    Blog
  • Week 43: Evaluating sustainability

    Meeting sustainability goals is one of the most important and urgent challenges for humanity yet for many of us, thinking about sustainability in evaluation means assessing the extent to which the benefits of a project, programme or policy
    Blog
  • Week 49: The 1st international conference on realist approaches to evaluation: my ‘realist’ take-aways

    In this blog, Tiina shares her top three realist ‘take-aways’ from the 1st International Conference on Realist Approaches to Evaluation and reflects on when or how realist evaluation may be most useful.
    Blog
  • 2017 International realist conference

    We've got our head in realism this week, partly because early-bird registrations for the 2017 International Realist Conference close soon, and partly because we've been shown Chris Lysy's realist cartoon series (commissioned by the Rameses
    Blog
  • Evidence-based policy: A realist perspective

    This book, written by Ray Pawson, provides a critique of the meta-analytic approach and argues that the realist synthesis is a better way of understanding program theory, therefore enabling properly targeted policies to address the con
    Resource
  • Realist evaluation introductory resources

    This website, from e-MOPs, provides an introduction to Realist Evaluation and includes links to a range of resources, including academic papers, video introductions, online community resources and case studies.
    Resource
  • Realist evaluation

    Realist evaluation aims to identify the underlying generative causal mechanisms that explain how outcomes were caused and how context influences these.
    Approach
  • Realist evaluation

    An approach especially to impact evaluation which examines what works for whom in what circumstances through what causal mechanisms, including changes in the reasoning and resources of participants.
    Approach
  • Realist impact evaluation: An introduction

    Realist impact evaluation is an approach to impact evaluation that emphasises the importance of context for programme outcomes.
    Resource
  • Introduction: Contribution, causality, context, and contingency when evaluating inclusive business programmes

    This IDS Bulletin discusses approaches and methods for meaningful impact evaluation, building on real-world experiences with theory-based evaluation in inclusive business programmes.
    Resource
  • Realistic evaluation bloodlines

    This article, written by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley analyses six different social science inquiries from around the globe that use a variety of methods and strategies in order to draw conclusions about realistic evaluations.
    Resource
  • Making rigorous causal claims in a real-life context: Has research contributed to sustainable forest management?

    This article discusses an impact evaluation that examined the contribution of two forestry research centres - the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour
    Resource
  • Causal Pathways introductory session: Realist evaluation

    This session of the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, by Melanie Punton, is an introduction to Realist Evaluation, a theory-based evaluation approach based on the idea that interventions do not work for everyone, all the time.
    Resource
  • Causal Pathways 2023 Symposium and 2024 introductory sessions

    This series of webinars was first presented at the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, which focused on "connecting, learning, and building a shared understanding of the evaluation and participatory practices that make causal pathways more visible"
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