This article discusses an approach to managing the evaluation of complex interventions. Complex interventions pose significant challenges to the role and conduct of evaluations. In particular, they combine with reflexive learning and change to produce significant uncertainties making it hard to describe in advance what the intervention will do or what the outcomes might be. These uncertainties …
This article uses the example of Sure Start, a national initiative introduced by the UK Government in the late 1990s, as a case study to explore the reasons why large-scale, complex, national initiatives often fail to adequately evidence the impact of their work. The authors explore a range of structural, cultural, methodological and practical factors that have acted to inhibit effective evalua…
In this article, the authors explore the relationship between (impact) evaluations and cyber society, in particular digital policies. There appears to be a gap between the pace at which internet and digital policies are penetrating society and the attention professional evaluators are paying to these policies. First, we present an analytical framework for studying these policies, while examples…
Capacity development support of Southern partners has become a cornerstone of the work of many Northern development NGOs. While there is a growing consensus in the aid sector about the importance of capacity development (CD), the support base among the general public and policy makers for these kinds of activities is weak. This is linked with the observed difficulties of demonstrating the relev…
This study evaluates the 20082009 Lose your Excuse public service advertising (PSA) campaign on energy efficiency targeting 8- to 12-year-olds, intended to increase knowledge, foster proactive attitudes, and change energy usage behaviors. Baseline and two follow-up surveys were conducted with online samples representative of the national population of households with kids with online access.…
Many inquiries regarding the causal effects of policies or programs are based on research designs where the treatment assignment process is unknown, and thus valid inferences depend on tenuous assumptions about the assignment mechanism. This article draws attention to the importance of understanding the assignment mechanism in policy and program evaluation studies, and illustrates how informati…
Two case studies are presented to compare and contrast the challenges encountered when attempting to conduct participatory evaluations (P-Es) with tribal programs that represented two extremes of collaboration between the programs and evaluators. In one case, the P-E was successful because the principals were invested in the program, whereas in the second case, the absence of a shared program v…
A mathematical model of HIV/sexually transmitted infections (STI) transmission was used to examine how linearity or nonlinearity in the relationship between the number of unprotected sex acts (or the number of sex partners) and the risk of acquiring HIV or a highly infectious STI (such as gonorrhea or chlamydia) affects the utility of sexual behavior change measures as indicators of the effecti…
The figure of King Prajadhipok (r. 192535), Siam's last absolute monarch, remains of great significance to Thailand's contemporary political discourse. King Prajadhipok's historical role as the founding father of Thai democracy, in particular, lies at the heart of the Chakri dynasty's claim to democratic legitimacy a claim that is now widely questioned, both at home and abroad. This articl…
This article explores EnglishThai translations of political ideology. It traces the evolution of the Thai term udomk?n and discusses how the complexity of the foreign discourse was reflected in its Thai counterpart. There was a conflation of idea and ideal. Udomk?n is a uniquely Thai word, translations of which have never been stable. The contemporary political conflict is analysed throu…
In Thailand the widespread assumption that bhikkhun? ordination has already been disrupted and that as a result Therav?da Buddhist women can no longer be ordained has been challenged by a group of women who have received the full monastic precepts from foreign sa?gha and practise Therav?da Buddhism in yellow monastic robes. Public concerns have centred on whether such bhikkhun? ordinations are …
This article reviews the memoirs of Ph?m Duy, a famous Vietnamese composer, who in the late 1930s and 1940s composed some of the first modern Vietnamese songs. His memoirs describe his time with the anti-French Resistance, his break with it in 1950, and his years in Saigon and the United States. My review focuses on curious aspects of these memoirs: Ph?m Duy's careful listing of his many love a…
This paper presents an overview of the main features and nature of T?t, the Vietnamese lunar New Year festival, as it is currently experienced in H? Ch Minh City. It outlines a variety of social practices associated with T?t and suggests that it is through these that one can identify a festive landscape in the city, within which a number of diverse places are made into and experienced as me…
The state-administered monopoly on the production of distilled rice alcohol instituted in Vietnam after 1897 evolved into one of the colony's most pervasive and unpopular institutions. This article examines the origins and operations of the monopoly, focusing on how much revenue it generated and for whom. It reveals that the monopoly generated little net revenue for the state, and instead funct…
This article proposes to study nineteenth-century Cam sources as valuable materials for the history of the disappearance of the kingdom of Camp? or more precisely its last independent principality of P???ura?ga and its integration into the Vietnamese realm during the first half of the nineteenth century. The end of Camp? is recorded mainly in metrical works known as ariya. These sources o…
In the late 1960s and early 1970s SHELTER produced a series of campaign pamphlets aimed at raising public awareness of homelessness in the United Kingdom. Back to school from a holiday in the slums! was one such pamphlet which, using a mixture of photographic images and oral testimony, posed a series of questions about the relationship between living in unfit and overcrowded housing and poor ed…
This paper examines the value of photography walking tours for exploring meanings and experiences of community. The work is part of a larger visual research project which sought to examine the everyday lives of residents in a neighbourhood identified as disadvantaged, with the tour being organized as an opportunity for residents to identify what they valued about their local environment and w…
The promotion of active ageing in later life has been a key development in recent health and social care policy. These changes not only challenge the prevalent view of old age as an inevitable process of biological decline but also signify the tendency of lay and expert discourses to increasingly use the notion of risk. At the same time, older peoples social identities need to be negotiated …
As subjects of the parental right to choose (DES, 1988), parents are called upon to fulfil certain duties and responsibilities when choosing a secondary school for their child, with the expectation that they might navigate the school system successfully and become better informed consumers (DCSF, 2008). To comply with these rules of citizenship parents are encouraged to make use of a variet…
This paper will focus on the place of black history in heritage sites in England and discuss how visual methodologies can be used to develop a more inclusive approach to heritage. It will argue that visual archives, from portraits of the aristocracy to asylum portraits, are an essential part of the research process for heritage site staff who are assessing how they connect to (potential) visito…