New article – two-steps to manage the risk of program failure

If you’ve been reading ARTD’s posts for a while, you may have already heard about our Chief Evaluator Andrew Hawkins’ Propositional Evaluation approach. In this article (EJA online early access), Andrew and collaborator Scott Bayley take a deep dive into Propositional Evaluation.

Propositional Evaluation “emphasises the creation of ‘sound’ programs through logical validity and empirical grounding, moving away from theory testing towards identifying risks in program design and managing the uncertainties of program implementation. This mindset fosters a collaborative, reasoned evaluation process that embraces multiple realities and perspectives. It champions pragmatism and reasoned action within complex systems”.

There’s much to consider in this article, from the theoretical underpinnings of the approach (an enjoyable romp for those who take delight in philosophy, science and causality, and evaluation theories), to the common symptoms of and underlying causes of failure, and ten risks which may be managed using a Propositional Evaluation approach, along with illustrative examples. The article also provides a two-step framework to manage the risk of program failure, with a focus in the design phase on determining the logical validity of a program, and in the delivery phase by collecting empirical data. Essentially, asking the questions “what makes this a good idea?” and “how can we make this work?”.

This article is the result of many years of deep thinking, wide reading and discussions with other evaluators. It may just change the way you think about what evaluation is, forever!
Read the article at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1035719X241270560

More of Andrew’s thinking on the topic can be found at:
https://www.propositionalevaluation.org/

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