Unintended consequences

Workshop: Grappling With the Unexpected From Firefighting to Systematic Action

What to Do When Impacts Shift and Evaluation Design Requires Stability?

Unintended consequences, Development, and Democracy

Joint Optimization of Uncorrelated Outcomes: Part 6 of 6 Posts on Evaluation, Complex Behavior, and Themes in Complexity Science

Another post on joint optimization of uncorrelated program goals as a way to minimize unintended negative consequences

Joint Optimization of Uncorrelated Outcomes as a Method for Minimizing Undesirable Consequences of Program Action

Program Logic, Program Theory, and Unintended Consequences: Understanding Relationships. Implementing Action

Big Data in Evaluation

Azenet Book Club – Life Cycles, Rigid evaluation requirements, and Implementation theory

Michael Bamberger has provided a case of unintended consequences: How a school breakfast program became a community nutrition program

Follow-up to AEA Think Tank session: Identifying Unintended Consequences of Development Programs

Azenet Book Club – Life Cycles, Rigid evaluation requirements, and Implementation theory

Arizona Evaluation Book Group – Reading The Book

Surprise in Evaluation: Values and Valuing as Expressed in Political Ideology, Program Theory, Metrics, and Methodology (AEA 2011 – Think Tank Proposal)

Miscellaneous thoughts on complexity in Evaluation

Empirical test of Jonny’s beliefs about evaluation surprise

Unexpected program outcomes as a function of the ideologies driving an evaluation – Some questions for the AEA

Efficiently (on the cheap) and effectively evaluating training with uncertain outcomes

Looking for examples of unexpected program outcome

Eat desert first. Life is uncertain.
Good advice. True observation.

Any yet, we must soldier on, trying to predict what will happen and to explain why things work out as they do. My professional life has grappled with prediction and explanation through the lens of program evaluation. I have come to appreciate how much, and how little, evaluation can tell us. Sometimes it is “much”. Sometime is “little”. Sometimes it is “much” and “little” at the same time. This blog expresses my engagement with what evaluation can do, what it cannot do, what it should do, and what it should not do. About the graphic.

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