Thank you for raising this question. I have a similar dilemma.
I look forward to reading the responses
Hazel
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From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Adrienne Levay <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 13 April 2016 23:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Dealing with "Big" and "little" Cs in the CMOcs
Hello!
First off, I just want to say how much I've been appreciating this email list as someone who is just delving into realist evaluation!
I'm a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. I'm currently conducting my field work for my research that is a realist evaluation of the provincial government's mandatory school food and beverage sales guidelines. I collected data for phase 1 of the work this last year with the aim of developing a retrospective program theory. Right now I'm trying to devise my hypothesised context + mechanism = outcome configurations and have a question about context.
I've noticed that I've got BIG contexts and little/highly specific contexts. For example:
Public Health Dietitians have school food designated to their portfolios/part of their job description (little C) + dietitians increased motivation and power/capacity to disseminate the updated guidelines and implementation resources/tools (M) ---> school district staff and school-level implementers are aware of the available implementation tools and resources (O)
But there are a number of BIG C contexts that are hypothesised to interact to create the little C context in the example above such as: "Health goals align with education's goals" and "Dietetics professionals viewed as respected/trusted experts" and "the existence of good intersectoral relationship between health and education" etc.
I guess my question is, then, what are some suggestions for how to incorporate these BIG C contexts into the presentation of the very specific programmatic CMOcs to create a clear and logical picture of what will be explored in the evaluation on-the-ground? I hope this makes sense!
Thank you in advance for the sagely advice I'm certain I will receive!
Cheers
Adrienne
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