Theory of change
A theory of change is an explicit theory of how and why it is thought that a social policy or program activities lead to outcomes and impacts. ToCs are used in the design of programs and program evaluation, across a range of policy areas.
Theories of change can be developed at any stage of a program, depending on the intended use. A theory of change developed at the outset is best at informing the planning of an initiative. Having worked out a change model, practitioners can make more informed decisions about strategy and tactics. As monitoring and evaluation data become available, stakeholders can periodically refine the theory of change as the evidence indicates. A theory of change can be developed retrospectively by reviewing program documents, interviewing stakeholders, and analyzing data that is relevant to a program. This is often done during evaluations to discover what has worked or not in order to understand the past and plan for the future.
History
Origins
The concept of theories of change emerged from the field of program theory and program evaluation in the mid 1990s as a new way of analyzing the theories motivating programs and initiatives working for social and political change. Its earlier origins can be traced to Peter Drucker's articulation of Management by Objectives, popularized in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. Management by Objectives requires identifying higher-order Goals, and lower-order Objectives which, if achieved, are expected to result in the Goals being achieved. Theory of Change extends beyond Goals and Objectives to include Impact – the anticipated result of achieving stated goals.Theory of Change is focused not just on generating knowledge about whether a program is effective, but also on explaining what methods it uses to be effective. Theory of Change as a concept has strong roots in a number of disciplines, including environmental and organizational psychology, but has also increasingly been connected to sociology and political science. Within industrial-organizational psychology, Austin and Bartunek have noted that approaches to organizational development are frequently based on more or less explicit assumptions about 1) the processes through which organizations change, and 2) the interventions needed to effect change.
Development in evaluation practice
Within evaluation practice, Theory of Change emerged in the 1990s at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change as a means to model and evaluate comprehensive community initiatives. Notable methodologists, such as Huey-tsyh Chen, Peter Rossi, Michael Quinn Patton, Heléne Clark, Carol Taylor Fitz-Gibbon, and Carol Weiss, had been thinking about how to apply program theories to evaluation since the 1970s. The Roundtable's early work focused on working through the challenges of evaluating complex community initiatives. This work culminated in a 1995 publication, 'New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives'. In that book, Carol Weiss, a member of the Roundtable's steering committee on evaluation, hypothesized that a key reason complex programs are so difficult to evaluate is that the assumptions that inspire them are poorly articulated. She argued that stakeholders of complex community initiatives typically are unclear about how the change process will unfold and therefore place little attention on the early and mid-term changes needed to reach a longer-term goal.Weiss popularized the term "theory of change" as a way to describe the set of assumptions that explain both the mini-steps that lead to the long-term goal of interest and the connections between program activities and outcomes that occur at each step of the way. She challenged designers of complex community-based initiatives to be specific about the theories of change guiding their work and suggested that doing so would improve their overall evaluation plans and would strengthen their ability to claim credit for outcomes that were predicted in their theory. She called for the use of an approach that, at first glance, seems like common sense: lay out the sequence of outcomes that are expected to occur as the result of an intervention, and plan an evaluation strategy around tracking whether these expected outcomes are actually produced. Her stature in the field, and the apparent promise of this idea, motivated a number of foundations to support the use of this technique—later termed "the Theory of Change approach"—in the evaluations of community change initiatives. In the years that followed, a number of evaluations were developed around this approach, fueling more interest in the field about its value and potential application.
Between 2000 – 2002, the Aspen Roundtable for Community Change led the dissemination and case studies of the Theory of Change approach, although still mostly applied to the field of community initiatives. As the Aspen Roundtable concluded its leadership in the field and moved on to apply Theory of Change to such topics as structural racism, others expanded the visibility and application of Theory of Change into international development, public health, human rights and more. The visibility and knowledge of Theory of Change grew with the creation in 2002 of theoryofchange.org and later of Theory of Change Online software.
Growing popularity
In the 2010s, interest increased with some reviews commissioned by Comic Relief in the UK, the Department for International Development in the UK, the Asia Foundation and Oxfam Australia to name a few. The explosion of knowledge of the term, and demand for "theories", led to the formation in 2013 of the first non-profit dedicated to promoting and clarifying standards for Theory of Change. The Center for Theory of Change houses a library, definitions, glossary and is licensed to offer Theory of Change Online by ActKnowledge free of charge.The use of Theory of Change in planning and evaluation has increased among philanthropies, government agencies, development organizations, universities, international NGOs, the UN, and many other major organizations in both developed and developing countries. This has led to new areas of work, such as linking the Theory of Change approach to systems thinking and complexity. Change processes are no longer seen as linear, but as having many feedback loops that need to be understood. Consequently, Theory of Change is strengthening monitoring, evaluation and learning. They are also helping to understand and assess impact in hard to measure areas, such as governance, capacity strengthening and institutional development. Innovations continue to emerge.
Challenges
Despite the growing ubiquity of Theory of Change, especially in the development arena, understanding of the approach and the methods necessary to implement it effectively are not uniform. In fact, there is evidence of some confusion about what the term 'Theory of Change' actually means; in some cases, what some program developers describe as a Theory of Change is, in essence, simply a log frame, strategic plan or another approach that does not encompass the complexity of the Theory of Change approach. There is also inconsistent use of other common Theory of Change terminology, which confounds effective Theory of Change design, evaluation, and learning.Methodology
Basic structure
A Theory of Change is a high order, or macro, If-Then statement: If this is done, Then these are the anticipated results. The outcomes pathway is a set of needed conditions relevant to a given field of action, which are placed diagrammatically in logical relationship to one another and connected with arrows that posit causality. Outcomes along the pathway are also preconditions to outcomes above them. Thus, early outcomes must be in place for intermediate outcomes to be achieved; intermediate outcomes must be in place for the next set of outcomes to be achieved; and so on. An outcomes pathway therefore represents the change logic and its underlying set of assumptions, which are spelled out in the rationales given for why specific connections exist between outcomes and in the theory narrative.Quality control criteria
In the early days of Theory of Change, Anne Kubisch and others established three quality control criteria. These are:; Plausibility
; Feasibility
; Testability
In addition to these three basic quality control criteria, ActKnowledge has added another key criterion: Appropriate Scope. An actionable theory that can be communicated to the key audiences is dependent in part upon choosing the right scope: broad enough to leave no gaps in the model, yet focused enough on the opportunities and resources at hand. Appropriate Scope also integrates the evaluation concept of "accountability". Many Theory of Change outcome pathways include an "accountability ceiling," often a dashed line drawn across the pathway that separates outcomes the organization will monitor and claim credit for attaining from higher-order outcomes that are beyond its power to achieve—e.g., "a just society."
Applying the model
An important first step in the process is identifying a workable long-term goal and long-term outcomes. The long-term goal should be something the initiative can realistically achieve and that everyone involved understands. A trained external facilitator is best to lead the group to consensus and specificity in this process.Once a long-term goal is identified, the group then considers: "What conditions must be in place for us to reach the goal?" Any such necessary conditions should be shown as outcomes on the Theory of Change pathway, underneath the long-term outcome. These outcomes act as preconditions to the long-term outcome.
The process of identifying preconditions continues, drilling down the pathway by posing fundamental questions such as: "What has to be in place for this outcome to be achieved?" and "Are these preconditions sufficient for the outcome to be achieved?" In these sessions, participants may use markers, sticky notes, and chart paper to identify and organize outcomes, surface assumptions, develop indicators, and so on.
The messy group work is then usually captured by the facilitator in digital form, through which the content can be expanded, edited, printed, shared, and otherwise managed as the theory continues to be developed.