Читать книгу An Introduction to Evaluation - Chris Fox - Страница 71

The theory of change was fully articulated in the 1990s at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change. This articulation came out of a discussion regarding the evaluation of complex programmes, namely those on community initiatives aiming for social and political changes. Briefly, these initiatives:

indicate a commitment to change at many levels, including individual, family, institutional, and community-wide, through processes that involve collaboration and coordination within the community and between the community and the broader society. (Kubisch et al. 1998: 2)

Evaluating Complex Community Initiatives (CCIs) was found to be challenging (Kubisch et al. 1998) due to the following:

 Horizontal complexity The interlinkages and interconnections between different variables and factors pose questions regarding what to measure. These initiatives may act on several fronts, trying to tackle diverse issues at the same time, e.g. improving housing, employment skills, and relationships within the family. Clearly discerning what has worked and what has not is a challenge.

 Vertical complexity In CCIs interventions aim at different levels – community, institutional, family, and individual. Again, and because of the interlinkages, it becomes very difficult to know at what level change is having a ripple effect.

 Contextual issues Macro-level and structural issues are particularly challenging, e.g. economic environment and ethnicity. In these cases, it may be almost impossible to act on the barriers to further improvements and change.

 Flexible and evolving intervention By design, CCIs are meant to be malleable and adaptable to community dynamics and its organic development. This offers its own challenges when it comes to monitoring these initiatives and assessing its impact.

 A broad range of outcomes These are are mostly at different levels. The horizontal and vertical complexity of these initiatives leads to the formulation of different goals for different areas on intervention that may sit at different levels. The definition, understanding, and hence operationalisation and measurement of these goals are challenging.

  Absence of a comparison community or control group In most cases, in its inception there are no provisions to ensure that a comparison community or control group is followed in order to robustly assess the impact of the initiative and its contribution beyond reasonable doubt.

Weiss (2000) hypothesises that a key reason why CCIs and other complex programmes are difficult to evaluate is that the theories of change that underpin them are poorly articulated. The theory of change is essential nevertheless in that it relates the programme theory and the implementation theory. It posits questions that trigger a reasoning which starts with the change, the assumptions behind what makes the change happen (programme theory), and ends with the how (implementation theory).

However, and from its origins, TOC has been defined and redefined by various authors and in many cases ‘theory of change’ tends to be used interchangeably with other concepts or described approaches, particularly programme theory. And yet there is an important albeit rather subtle distinction between the two: programme theory can be seen as preceding and then evolving and expanding into TOC, which is more relational and holistic.