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 , trackbackYesterday 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).
This may be a low-cost way of solving a current problem in best practice which is that those funding many best practice exercises may not be prepared to spend as much money on disseminating the findings as they have spent on identifying the best practice in the first place. Not focusing on dissemination of best practice is a mistake because, at the end of the day, the whole point of such exercises is to get best practice findings applied as widely as possible.
Visual outcomes models drawn according to the standards identified in outcomes theory and as used in its applied version Easy Outcomes, provide a way of visually describing all of the steps which need to be undertaken so as to achieve a set of outcomes. Conceptually, this is what you are trying to do when you identify best practice.
This opens up the intriguing possibility that visual outcomes models could be used to identify best practice and then, equally importantly, as a cost-effective way of disseminating it. If such visual models are developed using appropriate software such as DoView outcomes and evaluation software [Full Disclosure: the author is involved in the development of DoView], this opens up the possibility of a rapid means of disseminating visual outcomes models which have been developed as a way of codifying best practice.
DoView lets you immediately create web page models from your visual outcomes models. These can then just be put up on the open internet, behind a password, or on an intranet. Then anyone from a program in which you want best practice to be applied can look in a normal browser and click through the model getting getting best practice ideas.
Why is has this not always been done to communicate best practice in the past? I think that it is because of the nature of the way in which outcomes models, and in particular a form of them which is widely used – called logic models – have been drawn in the past. Logic models tend to be crammed onto a single page. This means that, because of the limited space, they cannot contain the vast bulk of the detail which we would expect to be identified in a best practice exercise. In addition, there is a general prejudice against including in outcomes models things variously described as ‘processes’ or ‘activities’. There are technical reasons for this, as discussed in the article on simplifying terms used when working with outcomes. However, because of the way these issues are dealt with within outcomes modeling, as used in outcomes theory, the outcomes models developed according to the outcomes theory outcomes model standards can be of any size. This means that, if desired, one can drill down to develop a model at any level of detail. The result is that such models can provide a rich and detailed model of all of the steps, at whatever level, that a best practice exercise is suggesting should be done within a program. For instance, I have been involved in developing some models for clients which include up to 30 slices (sub-pages) within a DoView visual outcomes model.
To make the best practice transfer of knowledge more seamless, DoView lets anyone viewing the model also download a PDF of the model for printing. In addition, if users have DoView installed on their computers, they can immediately download a DoView version of the model which they can start editing and adjusting to suit what is happening in their particular program.
This means that a particularly efficient approach to best practice could be to first get those identifying best practice to do so by developing detailed visual outcomes models developed according to the standards. Then one could introduce the requirement that all programs to which you want best practice disseminated, also have to produce outcomes models according to the standards. This would create an incentive for the programs to go to the best practice outcomes model site and borrow the best practice models as the basis for the models they are building. This then just needs to be combined with the requirement that the programs in which you want best practice implemented monitor their implementation against the visual outcomes model. How to do this is all set out at the Easy Outcomes site. You then have a way of efficiently recording best practice, disseminating it, and ensuring that it is applied through monitoring. And all of this can be made totally transparent if you wish by getting all the programs involved to click a couple of times within DoView, create a web page version of their model and have it put up on the internet.
If anyone wants a hand trying out this approach, just get in touch. The article is here.
Paul Duignan, PhD
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[...] Paul Duignan put an intriguing blog post on OutcomesBlog.Org » Using visual outcomes models to describe and …Here’s a quick excerptPosted by Paul Duignan in : Outcomes theory, Doing evaluation more efficiently, Outcomes systems architecture, Reporting systems, Research influening policy, Strategic planning, Communicating outcomes models, Easy Outcomes, … [...]
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