Stories as evidence

Overview

Stories, interviews, complaints and survey comments are often the richest evidence an organisation holds, yet few leaders are helped to judge them. This module shows how to weigh narrative evidence rigorously, using Lincoln and Guba's trustworthiness criteria, Most Significant Change from Rick Davies and Jess Dart, Denzin's forms of triangulation and John Creswell's mixed methods designs, illustrated by the invented Tir Afon Housing case. How do you tell whether something worked when many services and forces act on the same outcome at once? This module sets out Pawson and Tilley's realist evaluation, John Mayne's contribution analysis, the Human Learning Systems approach from Toby Lowe and colleagues, and Michael Quinn Patton's developmental evaluation, with the Plymouth Alliance for Complex Needs as an example. It helps you make, and challenge, honest claims about impact.

What you'll develop

In this Bitesize, you will develop the ability to:

1. 1Assess a qualitative report using Lincoln and Guba's criteria of credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, with reflexivity running through them.
2. 2Use Most Significant Change, triangulation and the three mixed methods designs to gather, check and combine stories and numbers.
3. 3Distinguish a story gathered with rigour, which counts as evidence, from an anecdote stumbled on, which is a prompt to look further.
4. 4Apply the realist question of what works, for whom, where and why, using context, mechanism and outcome configurations.
5. 5Distinguish attribution from contribution claims, and build a credible contribution story using Mayne's six steps.
6. 6Compare five evaluation approaches, and explain how Human Learning Systems and developmental evaluation treat evaluation as learning rather than a verdict.