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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