IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/evarev/v40y2016i1p61-84.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Matching Evaluation Approaches to Levels of Complexity

Author

Listed:
  • Yuval Ofek

Abstract

Background: Despite rapid advances in research on the evaluation of complex interventions, debate on evaluation methods and approaches still mainly revolves around the conventional and mostly outdated positivist–constructivist dichotomy. The lack of a clear conceptual and theoretical framework from which to choose appropriate evaluation approaches and methods means that approaches are often misused by both researchers and practitioners. Research design: Using three case studies, this article shows how different approaches should and should not be used in practice according to levels of nonlinearity. Both the theoretical development and the case studies presented in this article rely heavily on interviews conducted by the author with program management and staff, evaluation managers, heads of evaluation units, and evaluators in several countries across two continents, along with a quantitative survey. Results: This article expands the classic discussion on evaluation approaches, adapting it to current managerial demands, increased complexity, and newly developed methodologies. It suggests an operational tool for categorizing evaluations and then matching evaluation approaches to the circumstances and the evaluation objectives. Conclusion: The findings suggest that approaches which are not congruent with levels of nonlinearity may hinder attempts to accurately evaluate results, causing dissatisfaction of evaluation commissioners from the evaluation process and methods applied. In contrast, analyzing the nonlinear and structural elements of complexity separately allows an extended categorization of evaluation approaches to be matched to the nonlinearity of programs to be evaluated.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuval Ofek, 2016. "Matching Evaluation Approaches to Levels of Complexity," Evaluation Review, , vol. 40(1), pages 61-84, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:40:y:2016:i:1:p:61-84
    DOI: 10.1177/0193841X16656102
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X16656102
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0193841X16656102?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Legrand, Karine & Minary, Laetitia & Briançon, Serge, 2018. "Exploration of the experiences, practices and needs of health promotion professionals when evaluating their interventions and programmes," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 67-72.
    2. Ofek, Yuval, 2017. "Evaluating social exclusion interventions in university-community partnerships," Evaluation and Program Planning, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 46-55.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:evarev:v:40:y:2016:i:1:p:61-84. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.