Igniting citizen participation in creating healthy built environments: the ro…

This article examines the function of community-based organizations in engaging citizens in planning healthy built environments in urban neighbourhoods. Research on the 3-year Green, Active, Healthy Neighbourhoods (GAHN) initiative, spearheaded by a city-wide umbrella group and local organizations in four boroughs of Montreal found that in activating citizen participation, the role of organizat…

Health impact assessment as community participation

Health impact assessment (HIA) is a tool by which prospective policies and plans are evaluated for their potential impact on human health outcomes. This interdisciplinary practice uses community-based approaches to examine social determinants of health. This paper critically examines the prevailing belief that HIA practice in the US context increases community democracy, equity, and social just…

Picturing community development work in Uganda: fostering dialogue through ph…

This article explores the use of photovoice in understanding the roles and experiences of community development workers in Uganda and how such methodology can foster dialogue. Community development workers, attached to a local development organisation, took photographs and engaged in discussions about their roles and experiences. The rich and generative photovoice exercise revealed four major t…

Exclusion in development initiatives: a study of women with disabilities in B…

This article is based on a qualitative project that focused on women with disabilities in Binga in Zimbabwe and their participation in government and non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs) initiatives, as well as their access to formal support for self-initiated projects. To achieve this aim, a story-telling approach was used, complemented with semi-structured interviews and focus group discuss…

Cork as canvas: exploring intersections of citizenship and collective memory …

Urban space has the potential to shape people's experience and understanding of the city and of the culture of a place. In some respects, murals and allied forms of wall art occupy the intersection of street art and public art; engaging, and sometimes, transforming the urban space in which they exist and those who use it. While murals are often conceived as a more ‘permanent’ form of painted ar…

Is there a role for marketing in community development?

Social marketing is the application of marketing theory to social issues. A significant drawback, though, is that practitioners are encouraged to assume high levels of agency among their target audiences, often while developing programmes aimed at very disadvantaged groups. However, some social marketers work openly and collaboratively at neighbourhood level to co-create change with the people …

Building peace through social change communication: participatory video in co…

This paper draws on the experience of conducting participatory video in the Rift Valley of Kenya after the 2007–2008 post-election crisis, when the country underwent a period of intense ethnic violence. By linking development communication to conflict transformation theory, this article offers a framework that highlights the impact that communication for social change can have in post-conflict …

Build a fruit tree orchard and they will come: creating an eco-identity via c…

The theories of eco-identity, community development and community service gardening activities were addressed in the current study. The project explored how ecologically based gardening and fruit tree-planting activities helped to establish and define an eco-identity among diverse participants. Participants consisted of student volunteers and community members (n = 52) who were assigned a varie…

Mind the Gap! The growing chasm between funding-driven agencies, and social a…

The field of human services is increasingly adopting narrow practice approaches, driven by contemporary funding priorities. Such approaches reflect a reductionist understanding of human need, and run contrary to the wisdom, accumulated knowledge, experience, evidence and ethics of social and community development work. Drawing from a small group of refugee women's accounts of everyday challenge…

Indigenous community enterprises in Chiapas: a vehicle for buen vivir?

Buen vivir is an indigenous conception of well-being that has recently entered the Latin American debate on development. Overcoming the mainstream Western conception of development based mainly on economic growth, buen vivir emphasizes the importance of indigenous culture, the natural environment, and collective well-being. This article reports on an ethnographic study of self-managed grass-roo…

I thought this was a Christian thing? Exploring virtuous and exclusionary cyc…

The role of faith groups as welfare providers has received notable attention in the past few years as religious groups have become increasingly active in the voluntary sector. Developing Baker's ideas on ‘local performative theologies’, we examine data from semi-structured interviews focusing on Christian interdenominational networks and forms of collaboration which underpin faith-based project…

Participatory community development: evidence from Thailand

Participation in community development is the key to promoting efficiency, accountability, and transparency in resource allocations for community development, resulting in fewer problems of social inequality. Many ‘participatory’ development projects, however, have not been successful in arousing participation among community members. In many such cases, cultural values and social norms are key…

Constructing communities: the community centre as contested site

Drawing on original empirical research and theories of cultural geography, this article investigates the multiple ways community is produced, understood and valued through a closer interrogation of the community centre as a contested site. The paper investigates the symbolism of the buildings [see Dovey, K. (1999) Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form. Routledge, London] as they are cla…

Decentralization on the ground: challenges and opportunities for social work …

Decentralization has been a key reform implemented in post-communist countries after 1989. The shift from centralized to decentralized governance is associated with several expectations, such as improved quality of public services and increased government accountability. Social work practitioners can play a pivotal role in decentralization processes, serving as educators, advocates, and communi…

The practice of evaluation as an evaluation of practices

This article describes the theoretical basis and characteristics of a process-based, negotiated and generative approach to the evaluation of organizations. Illustrated by a case study, it highlights the inappropriateness of standardized instruments in the face of complexity and uncertainty, suggesting ways to improve the practice of evaluating dynamic complex systems. It underlines how conducti…

Taking stock of complexity in evaluation: A discussion of three recent public…

Edition

Volume 21, Number 4 October 2015, pages 481-491

ISBN/ISSN

1356-3890

Collation

-

Series Title

Evaluation

Call Number

-

Theory in evaluation: Reducing confusion and encouraging debate

One of the goals of the journal Evaluation was to advance theoretical and methodological understandings of evaluation. Twenty years later theory as understood in the field of evaluation is fragmented, a problem widely recognized in the evaluation community. The goal of this article is to make a modest contribution to clarifying this situation. We first present two typologies of evaluation theor…

Future-oriented impact assessment: Supporting strategic decision-making in co…

The article proposes a systemic and future-oriented evaluation approach designed to support decision-making in complex socio-technical environments. The approach integrates established methods of evaluation, foresight, impact assessment, system dynamic modelling and societal embedding within a single framework to provide versatile information to increase strategic intelligence in decision-makin…

The contribution of process tracing to theory-based evaluations of complex ai…

This article focuses on methodological challenges in evaluating complex program aid interventions like budget support. We show that recent innovations in process-tracing methodology can help solve the identified challenges and increase the strength of causal inference made when using case studies in demanding settings. For the specific task of evaluating the governance effectiveness of budget s…

Using theories of change in the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nut…

Theories of change are increasingly being discussed and referenced in development evaluation even while the elements of what a theory of change consist of differ widely among applications. Equally, examples of actual use of theories of change other than as overview illustrations of interventions are rare. In this article, we present generic models of theories of change for both straightforward …