Theory Of Change
16 pages in this theme.
A simple measure of the goodness of fit of a causal theory to a text corpus
Abstract Suppose an evaluation team has a corpus of interviews and progress reports, plus (at least) two candidate theories of change (ToCs): an original one and a revised one. A practical question is…
AI-assisted causal mapping. Uncovering causal pathways with INTRAC
2026 01 08 The partner{.banner} We partnered with INTRAC on a project for the SCC (Strengthening Civil Society) programme. This programme is led by a consortium of four organisations: PAX, ABAAD, Defe…
Causal Mapping – the evaluation evidence broker
Marshalling causal evidence at scale for Contribution Analysis and beyond. {.banner} start multi column: PowerTool {.panel} Causal Mapping is not primarily an evaluation method; it is a way of identif…
Causal mapping can complement contribution analysis
Contribution analysis is about testing and refining a theory of change to build a credible case for contribution. It's focused on a specific theory of change and on the contributions to outcomes. Thes…
Causal mapping can help reconstruct a program theory empirically
To evaluate a program, the evaluator can use Contribution Analysis (CA) [@mayneMakingCausalClaims2012]. We start with a program logic or Theory of Change (ToC), consisting of possible pathways from in…
Checking the claims in an AI report cannot find its omissions
For evaluators and applied social researchers who use AI in qualitative analysis, or use or assess work that does. Summary A frontier AI can turn a terms of reference and a pile of transcripts into a…
Contribution analysis
010 Testing rival theories ((theory fit))|The theory fit paper takes rival published theories and asks which the material supports. 020 Realist mechanisms ((realist mechanisms))|The realist paper star…
Does the evidence support your theory of change ?
!100 Task 3 Answering questions Individual questions/img/screenshot 110 does the evidence support your theory of change qq testing theory.png One way to do this is to use the elements from your theory…
Is there already a standard ?
Is there already a standard for this? Before proposing an open standard for qualitative text processing workflows in evaluation, we went looking for one. This page reports what we found, so that anyon…
Outcome harvesting
Outcome harvesting is the most participatory of the methods in this chapter and the one where a machine has least business doing the interesting part. So the question is not how to build a better outc…
Realist mechanisms
Work in progress. A design sketch rather than a finished study. Nothing here has been run: the workflows are written and validated against the engine, and no result is reported because there is none y…
Rubicon
!Rubicon, evaluative workflows Rubicon is an experimental app from Causal Map Ltd for evaluators who use AI on interviews and reports. You break an evaluation question into steps somebody else could c…
Rubicon principles
Work in progress. The principles Rubicon works to, taken from its design document and kept in step with it. What Rubicon is, and how a piece of work goes, are on rubicon.causalmap.app. Principles What…
Testing rival theories
Work in progress. A design for a study rather than a finished one. One theory of the five has been put through the machinery on the real corpus, and what that produced is under A first run . The study…
Theory-based evaluation
The family the other method papers belong to. Contribution analysis, realist evaluation and process tracing all state a theory in advance and then put it to the material. Commissioners ask for that in…
ToC and causal maps in Ghana – Summary (book chapter)
[@powellDoesOurTheory2023] Source: book chapter draft in . Purpose Show how QuIP style causal mapping can compare an official programme ToC (“their theory”) with empirically coded beneficiary narrativ…