New outcomes modeling standards released November 1, 2006
Posted by Paul Duignan in : Outcomes models, Standards , add a commentThese days many people are involved in drawing outcomes models for organizations or projects. They go by various names – intervention logics, program logics, causal chains, results chains, program theories, program theories of action. I get to look at a lot of them and, to be frank, many of the ones I see are problematic. They’re either all over the place, or in many cases they are so limited (by limiting them to measurable and attributable outcomes – see later in this post) that they’re almost useless for most purposes. Don’t get me wrong, there’re also people out there drawing good models, but its often in spite of the received wisdom about drawing such models, rather than being because of it.
The problem with the bad outcomes models is that many of them are drawn using arbitrary rules which severely limit their usefulness. For instance in some cases, only three levels are allowed within such models (outputs, intermediate outcomes, final outcomes). While perhaps some simple programs can be modeled within this constraint (I suspect that there are few programs which can), increasingly I’ve come to think that it’s often crazy to limit people in this way when they are drawing outcomes models. I’ll be saying why in detail in later blog postings. (more…)