Workshop – Complex Behavior in Models, Methodology, and Metrics

Early Childhood Development Action Network Master Class in Systems Thinking: Complex System Behaviors that Can Help Us Plan and Evaluate

A Different Way to Understand How Programs Work and What They Accomplish – EES 2023 Professional Development

Professional Development Study Case: Individual and Joint Evaluation of Loosely Coordinated Community Development Efforts

Applying Complexity Science to Evaluation. AEA 2023 Professional Development Session

Workshop: Drawing from Complexity Science to do Evaluation.

Complexity in Evaluation: My Latest Thinking on What Matters

Complex behavior can be evaluated using comfortable, familiar methodologies – Part 4 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Ignoring complexity can make sense – Part 3 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Evaluating for complexity when programs are not designed that way Part 10 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

A few very successful programs, or many, connected, somewhat successful programs? Part 9 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

How can the concept of “attractors” be useful in evaluation? Part 8 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Why should evaluators care about emergence? Part 7 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Joint optimization of unrelated outcomes – Part 6 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

A pitch for sparse models – Part 5 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Complex systems or complex behavior? Part 1 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Complexity has awkward implications for program designers and evaluators – Part 2 of a 10-part series on how complexity can produce better insight on what programs do, and why

Eat dessert 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.