Hi Freda,
I would not refer to the CMO configuration as such ("in this configuration...") but re-phrase it as a proposition that is meaningful for each interviewee. For example, to the educators you could say something like "Looking at my data I can see that in smaller schools like this one, teachers have less support with admin tasks and this can for some people generate a frustration that it is not always helpful to engage with new programmes activities requiring even more administration. Is this something you have experienced? Have you seen other people experiencing this?"
Some interviewees may give you a perfect example that will support this hypothesis (this CMO). Others may refute it or say that they have never experienced this. Others may help you refine "frustration" because they will talk in detail about a lived experienced of inability to focus on what they like to do (teaching) because they have to write all these reports., etc, etc. Others may help you refine who those "some people" are and why this is more likely to happen to them and not others....
Once you are at this point (relevance ) you need to build up rigour. Try to find other data in your own study, from other similar studies, from other families of programmes literature that supports (or refines again) this CMO.
Best wishes
Ana
Dr Ana Manzano
Lecturer in Health & Social Policy
Centre for Health, Technologies & Social Practice (Thesp)
School of Sociology & Social Policy
Social Sciences Building- Room 11.20
University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
Tel. 00441133431290
http://www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/people/staff/manzano
Twitter: @ana__manzano
Latest papers:
Manzano, A., 2016. The craft of interviewing in realist evaluation. Evaluation, p.1356389016638615.
http://evi.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/01/1356389016638615.abstract
Wong, G., Westhorp, G., Manzano, A., Greenhalgh, J., Jagosh, J. and Greenhalgh, T., 2016. RAMESES II reporting standards for realist evaluations. BMC medicine, 14(1), p.1.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0643-1
-----Original Message-----
From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Freda Browne
Sent: 22 July 2016 08:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: realist interview questions
Dear all,
I continuously read this discussion board and have found the advice given so helpful to date with my project.
I am a Prof Doc student using RE to evaluate an education porgamme. In phase 1, I have undertaken a document analysis and interviews in order to form my conjectured CMO configurations. In my research design I am hoping to have experts review (in an interview) these conjectured CMO configurations in order to verify that they are valid and testable. Having read Manzano (2016), Pawson and Manzano (2012) and Pawson and Tilley (1997), I have gained a lot of advice on how to set up and conduct the interview but I am struggling with how to pose my interview questions. Is it sufficient to present the expert with the conjectured CMO configuration and simply ask them ‘in this configuration I have placed context, mechanisms, outcome etc etc. what do you think of this relationship, and then follow up with questions such as have you seen this happen, what is your experience?
Looking forward to receiving your experienced advice and comments.
Thank you
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