Compare methods
Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Realist Evaluation× | Theory of Change Evaluation× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Public Policy | Public Policy |
| Family | Process / pipeline | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 1997 | 1995 |
| Originator≠ | Ray Pawson & Nick Tilley | Carol Weiss; Connell & Kubisch; Funnell & Rogers |
| Type≠ | Theory-driven, generative evaluation approach | Theory-based program evaluation framework |
| Seminal source≠ | Pawson, R., & Tilley, N. (1997). Realistic Evaluation. London: SAGE Publications. ISBN: 9780761950097 | Weiss, C. H. (1995). Nothing as practical as good theory: Exploring theory-based evaluation for comprehensive community initiatives for children and families. In J. P. Connell, A. C. Kubisch, L. B. Schorr, & C. H. Weiss (Eds.), New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts (pp. 65–92). Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute. ISBN: 9780898431674 |
| Aliases | Realistic Evaluation, Theory-Driven Realist Evaluation, CMO Configuration Analysis, Pawson-Tilley Evaluation | Theory-Based Evaluation, ToC Evaluation, Theory-of-Change Approach, Outcomes Pathway Evaluation |
| Related≠ | 4 | 3 |
| Summary≠ | Realist evaluation is a theory-driven approach to evaluating programs and policies that asks not simply 'does it work?' but 'what works, for whom, in what circumstances, and why?'. Developed by Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley in their 1997 book Realistic Evaluation, it treats interventions as theories incarnate: programs offer resources or opportunities that trigger underlying mechanisms of reasoning and response in participants, and those mechanisms only fire in particular contexts. The unit of analysis is the Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO) configuration, and the goal is to build and refine middle-range theory that explains differential outcomes across settings. | Theory of change evaluation is a theory-based approach that evaluates a program against an explicit map of how and why it is expected to produce its intended outcomes. Rooted in Carol Weiss's work on theory-based evaluation and the Aspen Institute's community-initiatives projects of the 1990s, it requires evaluators to articulate the full causal pathway from activities through short- and intermediate-term outcomes to a long-term goal, make the underlying assumptions explicit, and then collect evidence to test whether each link in that chain holds in practice. The theory of change serves simultaneously as a planning tool and as the framework against which the program's progress and plausibility are judged. |
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