Rick’s Methods:

This section of the website focuses on a small number of methods that I have been trying to develop over the years. When reading these please bear in mind two points: (a) My approach to M&E is not limited to these methods, (b) I am not pushing, or believing in any single school of evaluation – I am in favor of pluralism and creative combination of methods

  • Most Significant Change (MSC): A participatory method of monitoring and evaluating change without the use of indicators
  • Hierarchical Card Sorting (HCS): A simple method of eliciting and documenting people’s informal and tacit / informal knowledge. Useful for managing and evaluating portfolios of projects/partners, stakeholder analysis, and scenario planning.
  • The Basic Necessities Survey (BNS): A democratic and rights-based approach to the measurement of poverty. Simple and easy to use.
  • Weighted checklists: A participatory means of measuring complex change. In place of simplistic use of single indicators.
  • Evaluation Questions Checklists
  • EvalC3- for building and testing complex predictive models of outcomes of interest). EvalC3 is an Excel app that combines a QCA perspective on causality and causal analysis, with the use of predictive analytics search algorithms, plus other features not provided by either
  • ParEvo (previously Evolving Storylines): A participatory method of developing multiple alternative views of the future, or interpretations of the past.
  • Network models: An alternative approach to representing theories of change (and what is actually happening), especially as captured by the Logical Framework
  • Participatory aggregation of qualitative information: How to use network visualisation software to aggregate and explore categories-in-use by multiple participants (found via pile/card sorting exercises). And how to build up a collective Theory-of-Change from the individual perspectives of multiple stakeholders

The “Rick on the Road” blog also contains many other postings on new methods and approaches, some of which have been developed more than others.

See also my 1998 PhD Thesis: Order and Diversity: Representing and Assisting Organisational Learning in Non-Government Aid Organisations based on field work in Bangladesh between 1992 and 1995

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