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RAMESES  July 2014

RAMESES July 2014

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Subject:

Re: A new particiant question regarding mechanisms

From:

Sandy Oliver <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards" <[log in to unmask]>, Sandy Oliver <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Thu, 10 Jul 2014 07:09:41 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (174 lines)

Dear Gill

Thank you very much for explaining how you identify mechanisms in a theory building realist review. That's helped me clarify my thinking for a couple of pieces of work: primary research about institutional mechanisms for producing policy-relevant reviews; and a review about effective and efficient committees.

Best wishes, Sandy

Sandy Oliver, PhD, Professor of Public Policy
Social Science Research Unit and EPPI-Centre, Institute of Education, University of London.

Public engagement with academic research: outsiders bring
(a) independence for oversight
(b) experiential knowledge for designing studies
(c) practical and problem solving skills for data collection and analysis, and
(d) an inquiring mind for research informed citizenship. http://bit.ly/YeT0w2
Twitter @profsandyoliver
________________________________________
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gill Westhorp [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 10 July 2014 02:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A new particiant question regarding mechanisms

Hi all

I think there are a couple of things to keep clear in this discussion.

One is the distinction between realist synthesis and realist evaluation.
It's certainly possible to do both in the same study, but they're quite
separate things and they can require quite different processes to identify
mechanisms.   So - with thanks for the kind words Justin - the link we just
posted is to a theory-building realist synthesis (rather than a realist
evaluation).  By that I mean - a realist synthesis where we could not,
because of the terms of the contract and the stage of development of
existing theory - posit the mechanisms in advance and investigate a little
segment of program theory in depth.  Rather, we had to begin the process of
building realist theory from the existing literature and the focus was on
breadth rather than depth.

So my first question for you Barbara is - are you undertaking a realist
evaluation or a realist synthesis, or both?

The second thing I think we need to keep clear is the two uses of the term
mechanism.  It's unfortunate but the word was already used in much research
and evaluation to mean 'program strategy' or 'feature of the intervention'.
Realists of course mean 'underlying causal process'.

That second one gets intricate for two reasons.  Firstly, there are multiple
different ways of thinking about and understanding underlying causal
processes, of which Pawson and Tilley's 'reasoning and resources' is just
one.  Secondly, using P&T's construct, features of the intervention can in
some cases be the resource, or provide the resource, in response to which
the participant (or other decision-maker) reasons.

Consequently, features of the intervention can concurrently be 'strategy'
and 'context' and 'mechanism'.  It all depends which particular little piece
of the analysis you're doing at a particular moment in time.  My mental
trick for this is to start by identifying the current outcome of interest
(which may of course be an immediate, short term, intermediate or long term
outcome); work back from that to identify the mechanism(s) (it or they were
underlying causes of the outcome), and then identify features of context
that affect that mechanism.

Context can of course influence outcomes in many ways.  The 'purist' realist
view is that it affects which mechanisms 'fire'.  It also influences
implementation, of course (which in turn can influence which mechanisms can
fire) and it influences whether or not participants are able to put intended
decisions into action or maintain them (implementing the decision may or may
not be included in the description of the mechanism, depending on which
construct of mechanism one is using).

But in direct answer to your question Barbara - my perspective would be:
yes, there are very many studies that are stronger on context than
mechanism.  However from a 'pure' realist perspective - it's a bit difficult
to say that context has been dealt with 'well' if mechanism hasn't been,
because the focus is supposed to be on how context affects mechanisms.

I certainly wouldn't put it up as an exemplar of good realist practice but I
attempted a realist evaluation of a pilot program for which the report is
publically available: http://familybyfamily.org.au/   It does at least
provide a CMOC table!  Again, this was as much realist theory building as
theory testing.  We're hoping that future evaluations of this program may
get a little further on theory testing.

Cheers
Gill

-----Original Message-----
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jagosh, Justin
Sent: Thursday, 10 July 2014 10:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: A new particiant question regarding mechanisms

Dear Barbara,

Your observation about realist evaluations emphasizing context over
mechanism is something that I've noticed and thought about as well. There
are indeed good examples out there. Purva's is one. Gill Westhorpe just
posted a link to her recent realist evaluation in which the mechanisms are
quite well defined.
Yet there really is no set way of doing the analysis. It maybe the case that
the research team decides that exploring contextual determinants is more
useful than exploring mechanisms. Perhaps that is just fine - especially if
we approach research with the realist principle that all research produces
partial knowledge at best.

Personally, my research orientation is to begin synthesis by searching for,
and theorizing upon the mechanisms - that is, the range of intended and
unintended resources created + stakeholder responses, for the program in
question, or the cohort of programs. The idea here is that an understanding
of contextual factors can then be built subsequently from an initial
exploration into how the program works. In other words, first to 'break
down' the program into its underlying mechanisms, and then ask the question:
what contextual factors do we see impacting these mechanisms?

Doing it the other way around (i.e., starting with studying context), might
not yield the same analysis.  An additional point is that contextual
determinants can seem endless. Having a grasp of the candidate mechanisms
can help focus and pull out the relevant aspects of context that would seem
to make sense. The overall picture of the CMO configuration process can then
inform the theoretical output of the research.
There is no one way to tackle this, but it's what makes sense to me. I'd be
interested in hearing other thoughts.

sincerely,
Justin


Justin Jagosh, Ph.D
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Advancement in Realist Evaluation and Synthesis (CARES)
University of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Phone:
(in Canada)
00-1-604-822-3814 (w)
00-1-778-846-4589 (m)

________________________________________
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards
[[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Barbara Maxwell [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: July 8, 2014 23:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: A new particiant question regarding mechanisms

Dear fellow RAMESES participants,
this is my first post on the list serve ( oh my, that does sound like an
introduction at an AA meeting) and I was hoping for a little advice.
I am engaged in a study of interprofessional clinical education for
pre-qualification healthcare professional students and am attempting to
conduct a realist evaluation. The design is structured around the
application of the realist cycle. In reviewing the literature where a
realist evaluation has been stated as being used in IPE evaluative studies,
I have noticed that context is dealt with well in the majority of studies,
but mechanisms are not. It appears that many studies elude to mechanisms but
the items they identify are more characteristic of features of the program
design, or could be argued to be context items, and do not describe the
interaction of resources and reasoning. The studies also do not appear go to
the stage of identifying CMOC theories.
I wanted to ask if this a common issue in realist evaluation studies and ask
for some recommendations for studies that the RAMESES community would
recommend as exemplars of realist evaluation.


Barbara Maxwell
Professor & University Director of Interprofessional Education &
Collaboration A. T. Still University
5850 E Still Circle
Mesa AZ 85142
USA
[log in to unmask]
480 219 6109

The Institute of Education: Number 1 worldwide for Education, 2014 QS World University Rankings

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