1) As I am just beginning my realist review and realist evaluation I wanted to check if anyone else is looking at the same topic with a realist approach: I am evaluating a violence prevention education program to decrease the violence and violence related injuries that healthcare workers experience from patients (those they provide care for). It is an international problem with a large volume of literature but I have not found any research at this point that has taken a realist approach. Is anyone out there doing a similar thing? 😀

2) I will be conducting about 45 interviews and 9-12 focus groups across 3 different organizations and 9 sites (I have funding, stakeholder buy-in, and some research assistant support). As my own learning/thinking style is visual and interactive an idea keeps surfacing in my head to use props in my interviews (and possibly in the focus groups) to visually explain the initial program theory and elicit ideas about the CMO configurations.

little cutout or 3D “people”
a large piece of paper with a separate “classroom” and “workplace”
small shaped post it notes
- circular “contexts”
- thought bubble “mechanisms”
- square “outcomes”.
I would populate some of the c,m,o stickies based on the initial program theory and leave some blank that could be filled in during the interview/focus group. In addition to taping the sessions I thought I could take photos of the configurations that participants create, validate or refute with a small piece of paper in the photo with the coded participant ID, date and time). I wondered if this would help participants quickly understand the realist focus on theory as opposed to more general approach they may have experienced in other interviews while keeping me focused on theory building.