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  • Realist Evaluation Workshop

    The focus of this one-day workshop was to build practical skills to conduct a realist evaluation for international development projects and programmes. The rapidly changing context of development assistance in recent years combined with gro
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  • Week 49: The 1st international conference on realist approaches to evaluation: my ‘realist’ take-aways

    In this blog, Tiina shares her top three realist ‘take-aways’ from the 1st International Conference on Realist Approaches to Evaluation and reflects on when or how realist evaluation may be most useful.
    Blog
  • 2017 International realist conference

    We've got our head in realism this week, partly because early-bird registrations for the 2017 International Realist Conference close soon, and partly because we've been shown Chris Lysy's realist cartoon series (commissioned by the Rameses
    Blog
  • Evidence-based policy: A realist perspective

    This book, written by Ray Pawson, provides a critique of the meta-analytic approach and argues that the realist synthesis is a better way of understanding program theory, therefore enabling properly targeted policies to address the constant
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  • Realist evaluation introductory resources

    This website, from e-MOPs, provides an introduction to Realist Evaluation and includes links to a range of resources, including academic papers, video introductions, online community resources and case studies.
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  • Realist impact evaluation: An introduction

    Realist impact evaluation is an approach to impact evaluation that emphasises the importance of context for programme outcomes.
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  • Making rigorous causal claims in a real-life context: Has research contributed to sustainable forest management?

    This article discusses an impact evaluation that examined the contribution of two forestry research centres - the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and the Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour
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  • Introduction: Contribution, causality, context, and contingency when evaluating inclusive business programmes

    This IDS Bulletin discusses approaches and methods for meaningful impact evaluation, building on real-world experiences with theory-based evaluation in inclusive business programmes.
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  • Realistic evaluation bloodlines

    This article, written by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley analyses six different social science inquiries from around the globe that use a variety of methods and strategies in order to draw conclusions about realistic evaluations.
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  • Causal Pathways 2023 Symposium and 2024 introductory sessions

    This series of webinars was first presented at the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, which focused on "connecting, learning, and building a shared understanding of the evaluation and participatory practices that make causal pathways more visible"
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  • Causal Pathways introductory session: Realist evaluation

    This session of the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, by Melanie Punton, is an introduction to Realist Evaluation, a theory-based evaluation approach based on the idea that interventions do not work for everyone, all the time.
    Resource
  • Realist evaluation

    An approach especially to impact evaluation which examines what works for whom in what circumstances through what causal mechanisms, including changes in the reasoning and resources of participants.
    Approach
  • Realist evaluation

    Realist evaluation aims to identify the underlying generative causal mechanisms that explain how outcomes were caused and how context influences these.
    Approach