Hi Sandy,

 

Good to hear from you.

 

I’m very much a novice, but I attach the two working papers me and colleagues have developed at this stage. I’d be interested to know if the mouse metaphor (p 12, first attached paper), works for someone who’s not been to our workshop. ‘Sometimes, the mouse gets eaten’ became a much repeated phrase at a recent enterprise education conference after a workshop where we used that metaphor to help describe realist principles, but not sure if it works written down. Anyway, it’s just working paper, and we’re thinking we’ll take that out to try and get it published.

 

We are a long way off a realist review, but making baby steps towards one, by chunking down the work into different research tasks and papers.

 

We lack much primary data (eg evaluations of competitions programmes), so this is a limiting factor for us at the moment. But I will have more time to search when I start PhD in Oct.  

 

The attached gives you ideas of how we’ve approach it. I apologise in advance for any mistakes re realism etc, very much learning by reading/writing and doing at this stage. Any ideas for improvement etc always much appreciated.

 

Cheers

 

Catherine

 

From: Sada nanda Reddy [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 07 July 2017 05:32
To: Catherine <[log in to unmask]>; Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: 'realist diagnostic evaluation' of problems, not interventions- any examples?

 

Dear Catherine I am also very keen towards education... I am developing a support education program for adults with severe mental disorder here I need your support to conduct realist review for developing interventions. Kindly do the needful madam 

 

On Thu, 6 Jul 2017 at 2:29 PM, Catherine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Janet and all,

 

I’m near Sheffield, and have been lucky enough to recently get a scholarship (start in Oct) to study my obsession (the use of competitions in enterprise education).

 

I’d really welcome the opportunity to take part in a conversation/informal seminar etc. I’ve found this thread really interesting. Although my field is education, not health, and I’m a total realist novice, the initial realist influenced study I’ve been doing are leading me to spend a lot of time thinking about the disconnect between the ambitions/problem framing in policy, and the activity prescribed as a result (competitions are now recommended for all kids aged 11-18 in England to help them be more enterprising /work ready etc).

 

Though our fields are different, the things you mention below: how people see a problem and the agendas that get set, and determining the nature of the problem, are of great interest.

 

I’d be really grateful to be in the loop, if that’s possible.

 

Thanks and best wishes,

 

Catherine Brentnall

 

 

From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Janet L Harris


Sent: 06 July 2017 08:43


Subject: Re: 'realist diagnostic evaluation' of problems, not interventions- any examples?

 

Hi Jo and Amanda

 

Good to hear from you! After the conference in October I had to go on sick leave - torn rotator cuffs, no typing allowed. There was a huge backlog of emails to get through so all the realist networking went on hold.

 

I don't know of any resources on Realist Diagnostic Evaluation but for a long time I've been fascinated by problem framing. I can understand why Ray feels he is banging on about it, I can't seem to get anyone interested and was starting to think I was the only one who thought it was really important. Anyway in my Fellowship I've had a chance to look at it further and I'm writing up one of my projects as a case study where the original problem formulation led to the development of an evaluation question/impact evaluation that weren't useful for informing programme development. 

 

There are papers written in the field of policy, many have cited Diane Stone's work on the relationship between how people see a problem and the agendas that get set. In strategic management, Marjorie Lyles (1988) seemed to trigger a strand of enquiry with her article on strategic problem formulation and decision making models. Markus Baer (2013) 'Microfoundations of strategic problem formulation' calls it 'collaborative structured enquiry'. Some people came at it from the perspective of eliciting views of problems from stakeholders (Bryson et al (2003) 'What to do when stakeholders matter' ). Another perspective is John Lavis et al who are using deliberative dialogue to look at whether policymakers' opinions about the problem align with the research evidence - this is aimed at knowledge translation.

 

So the literature is not in any one field. But I would love the opportunity to chat about it. Do you think we might be able to get together - maybe a very informal seminar to share what we know and are trying to do? You are very welcome in Sheffield or I could pop over to Nottingham.

 

Best wishes

Janet


Janet Harris

NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow
Reader in Knowledge Mobilisation

University of Sheffield

School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR)

30 Regent Street

Sheffield  S1 4DA

England

+44 (0)114 222 2980

 

See our Masters programmes in Management and Leadership: MSc in International Health Management and Leadership by distance learning **New for September 2014**; and our MPH in Management and Leadership 
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/scharr/prospective_students/masters/ihml

 

 

On 5 July 2017 at 11:36, Joanne Howe <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi all,

 

Here at the University of Nottingham we have a small but growing group of researchers (PhD and post doc) using realist methods.

 

There are two of us (myself and a colleague) who think our own RE projects may fit into Ray’s description of a “Realist Diagnostic Evaluation” as we are not evaluating an intervention - more looking at the problem that exists in practice. In essence we are conducting this RE to determine the nature of the problem, this may or may not result in the development of an intervention in time. Currently we are referring to our studies as “Pre Realist Evaluation projects” but we wonder if there is any more information out there on Realist Diagnostic Evaluations. 

 

Ray has mentioned that he has been banging on about this type of research for a while and we would both be grateful if anyone could point us in the direction of any resources on this topic so that we may explore the area further.

 

Thanks

 

Jo and Amanda 

 

From: "Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards" <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Janet L Harris <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: "Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards" <[log in to unmask]>, Janet L Harris <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tuesday, 4 July 2017 at 11:20
To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: 'realist diagnostic evaluation' of problems, not interventions- any examples?

 

Hi Janet and John

 

I think there are some good examples in diabetes where research teams have started at the very beginning (before developing interventions) and asked 'what are the problems, who sees them as a problem, in these particular circumstances, and given the range of problems what are the possible solutions?' 

 

But the teams don't call this realist diagnostic evaluation. Teams using community based participatory research start by developing dialogue with local people to drill down into things that contribute to diabetes risk. The process identifies a problem, then the various dimensions of the problem. Taking physical activity as one example, local people describe environments that limit physical activity which include safety issues preventing activity, parental schedules and school schedules that limit opportunities for activity; increased availability of TV channel and computer games (sedentary activity). Moving on to food and nutrition, they list food deserts, issues with food labelling, cooking skills, etc. 

 

The aim of the process is to develop critical consciousness of how the surrounding context contributes to risk. The relationships between different sorts of risk are explored, and the understanding is used to make decisions about which problems can be addressed, and how they can be resolved.

 

We're just completing a review which looks at whether this sort of process helps to design more relevant and appropriate interventions. The protocol is here 

 

If you'd like some of the references showing how teams did this, feel free to get in touch -

 

Best wishes

Janet


Janet Harris

NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow
Reader in Knowledge Mobilisation

University of Sheffield

School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR)

30 Regent Street

Sheffield  S1 4DA

England

+44 (0)114 222 2980

 

See our Masters programmes in Management and Leadership: MSc in International Health Management and Leadership by distance learning **New for September 2014**; and our MPH in Management and Leadership 
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/scharr/prospective_students/masters/ihml

 

 

On 3 July 2017 at 13:30, Janet Heaton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear all

I’d be interested to hear any more thoughts on the points John raises too.

I may have an opportunity to build this into a 5-year study which has two parts: the first to explore the problem of unscheduled care for diabetes in three settings and identify an intervention (or two) to reduce this by 10%; the second to then pilot and test the intervention(s) in the three settings (rural regions in three countries).

Regards to all,

Janet

 

Janet Heaton

Research Fellow, Rural Health and Wellbeing

University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland

 

From: Realist and Meta-narrative Evidence Synthesis: Evolving Standards <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of John Ling <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 03 July 2017 09:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 'realist diagnostic evaluation' of problems, not interventions- any examples?

 

Dear RAMESES subscribers,

In the recent thread (29/6) about the University of Exeter job, Ray Pawson mentioned the need for 'realist diagnostic evaluation', applying realist synthesis techniques to the evaluation of a 'problem', prior to evaluating interventions (or even perhaps developing them?).

I wondered if there any good examples of this that the RE community might be able to share.

I'm doing a masters level study examining children's experience of parental brain injury and how they might become resilient to that adversity. Hoping to develop this into a PhD proposal, perhaps using RS/RE principles.

The literature describing the problem is relatively sparse and published programmes / interventions even more so. There are pockets of good practice - but these could perhaps be described as being sunk into 'usual care' as opposed to being discrete programmes.

Interested to hear any thoughts about (a) using realist approaches to understand "the what, where, why and for whom" of complex problems; (b) how RS/RE approaches to 'diagnosing' problems might feed-forward into recommendations for programmes as yet un-commissioned.

many thanks in advance for your time...

John Ling
Clinical Nurse Specialist
King's College Hospital
London

 

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