Social Innovation, evaluation and outcomes April 6, 2009
Posted by Paul Duignan in : DoView, Easy Outcomes, Impact evaluation, Outcomes models, Outcomes theory, Outcomes theory & politics, Research influening policy, Using the approach , add a commentI attended a launch of the New Zealand national Center for Social Innovation last night. Geoff Mulgan from the Young Foundation (a similar center in the U.K.) talked about social innovation. The social innovation movement is about getting stakeholders and sectors together to do things differently to achieve better social outcomes. Already a dynamic movement, it has recently received a shot in the arm from the global economic melt-down – traditional ways of doing things are increasingly being questioned and people are looking for new solutions. A number of points made by Geoff and in the subsequent discussion are particularly relevant to outcomes and evaluation were: (more…)
Using visual outcomes models to describe and communicate best practice April 3, 2009
Posted by Paul Duignan in : Communicating outcomes models, Doing evaluation more efficiently, DoView, Easy Outcomes, Evaluation planning, Outcomes models, Outcomes systems architecture, Outcomes theory, Reporting systems, Research influening policy, Strategic planning, Using the approach , 4commentsYesterday I blogged about what is meant by the term ‘best practice’. As I said then, I think that there is some conceptual confusion out there about it, and I am not sure that I have yet tidied it up my own thinking about it in a satisfactory way. However, the great thing is that regardless of how we define it, the idea of identifying the types of things that people currently call best practice and communicating these between programs is a great idea. The most difficult thing in many cases is to get best practice actually applied to on the ground after we have identified it. I have put up an Outcomes Theory Knowledge Base article (link to the article is at the bottom of this posting) on the issue suggesting that an efficient way of describing and communicating best practice may be to use visual outcomes models (a type of logic model). (more…)
What’s an RDP? Reseachers and policy makers in dialog March 22, 2009
Posted by Paul Duignan in : Research influening policy , add a commentLast week we held the final session of a national Rich Dialog Process (RDP) on the topic of the interface between research and policy. A Rich Dialog Process is a simple process which we have developed which facilitates deliberation and dialog on an issue on which stakeholders may have somewhat differing views. (More on the process at www.RichDialogProcess.org). We have run a number of these processes, usually related to research and evaluation issues. (more…)