A causal pathway is a line that shows what interventions you can make
and what contingencies will lead to the change you want to see.
It's where you take a messy picture of a project plan and bash it into a
linear shape, heading in the direction of your goals.
You identify, as much as you can, the ways that the interventions and
contingencies interact. Your interventions might directly impact on the
contingencies or they might evade them with more lateral solutions.
So, for example, one contingency affecting a children's centre could be
that lots of children have been forcibly moved away due to the housing
benefit cap. If the goal is to maintain the same level of children using
the centre, the interventions could include bussing them back to use the
centre, broadening the catchment area to take on new clients and so on.
If it's in your remit to tackle the root problem you might do some
political advocacy to stop the children being moved away.
Hope that helps. List members tell me to take this offline with Mia and
Janet, if it's not interesting.
B
On 07/06/2012 15:30, J DAVIS wrote:
> Could you define "causal pathway" a bit more, please, Bridget. This is a term with which I'm unfamiliar.
>
> Janet
>
> --- On Thu, 7/6/12, Bridget McKenzie<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> From: Bridget McKenzie<[log in to unmask]>
>> Subject: Re: 'Why evaluation doesn't measure up'
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Date: Thursday, 7 June, 2012, 14:54
>> Hi Mia
>> I hope this doesn't sound too jargony, and is useful for
>> everyone.
>> Theory of Change is a fairly rigorous method, with elements
>> which will be very familiar to most of you. It encourages
>> organisations to take a big picture and long term view, and
>> to challenge your shared assumptions.
>> It assumes that any project is intended to promote positive
>> change within /and/ outside the organisation (otherwise, why
>> do the project?).
>> It encourages you to be very specific and measurable, to
>> create a very graphic representation of change, which can be
>> pictured as a causal pathway. It helps you describe the
>> interventions that are needed to optimise this causal
>> pathway.
>> What I find helpful is that if an organisation takes on
>> board Theory of Change, evaluation isn't just 'tacked on' at
>> the end. Evaluation is the process of describing and
>> appraising all the interventions and the outputs on the full
>> length of this causal pathway.
>>
>> Bridget
>>
>>
> ****************************************************************
> website: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukmcg
> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/museumscomputergroup
> [un]subscribe: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
> ****************************************************************
****************************************************************
website: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ukmcg
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/museumscomputergroup
[un]subscribe: http://museumscomputergroup.org.uk/email-list/
****************************************************************
|