Laing, K.;
(2022)
The contribution of a ‘synergic theory of change’ approach to democratising evaluation.
Research for All
, 6
(1)
pp. 1-17.
10.14324/RFA.06.1.08.
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Abstract
This paper focuses on an evaluation of three projects working with young people in innovative ways to tackle societal alcohol misuse. Rather than presenting the findings of the evaluation per se, the paper presents learning from using theory-based approaches in a collaborative way to evaluate these complex, multi-strand initiatives. Traditional evaluations conducted by academics without collaboration with stakeholders can fail to meet the needs of those delivering interventions. Drawing on interviews with practitioners involved in delivering the projects, the paper adds new evidence to epistemological debates by introducing the notion of a ‘synergic theory of change’, whereby academic expertise and the skills, knowledge and experiences of stakeholders are subject to dialogue, and a theory of change becomes the result of collaborative consensus building. This way of using theory of change in evaluation requires researchers to work in a spirit of co-production and dialogue, and it can move evaluation away from being an exercise that seeks to judge interventions and, by extension, practitioners, to one which prioritises a shared learning journey. Using a synergic theory of change approach has the potential to change the nature of evaluation and lead to a different kind of relationship between researchers and practitioners than traditional methods-based approaches allow.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | The contribution of a ‘synergic theory of change’ approach to democratising evaluation |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.14324/RFA.06.1.08 |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.14324/RFA.06.1.08 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2022, Karen Laing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
Keywords: | theory of change, democratisation, co-production, evaluation |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10155042 |
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