-
Recent Posts
- Evaluation of marketing – grappling with the important but hard to measure outcomes
- The Friday Funny: A surrealistic mega-analysis of redisorganization theories
- Getting the facts straight on youth unemployment rates
- The Friday Funny: Negotiating the budget
- The Friday Funny: Evaluation and content expertise
Recent Comments
- Michael Scriven on Evaluation of marketing – grappling with the important but hard to measure outcomes
- Kathleen Lynch on The Friday Funny: Negotiating the budget
- Heather Nunns on Friday Funny – 10 ways of knowing you’ve been an evaluator too long
- Tarina MacDonald on 9 golden rules for commissioning a waste-of-money evaluation
- Tarina MacDonald on Valuing cultural expertise – in $$ terms
Archives
Tag Archives: Causal inference
The Friday Funny: New Poll Shows Correlation is Causation
There have been quite a few posts on Genuine Evaluation on the topic of causation. We got a kick out of this satirical newspaper report of a polling showing that correlation is, in fact, causality. What a relief! A few … Continue reading
The Friday Funny: A review of RCTs on parachute use
We recently stumbled across this all-time classic that Genuine Evaluation readers may well appreciate!
Smith, G. C. S. & Pell, J. P. (2003, December). Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 327, 1459-1461. Continue reading
Posted in Causal inference, Friday Funnies, Health
Tagged Causal inference, Health, parachute trials, RCTs, synthesis
1 Comment
£6 million over 5 years – and STILL no genuine evaluation of Blueprint?
When a large and expensive evaluation fails to produce useful results, it’s worth seeing if at least it can be useful as a cautionary tale. Blueprint is a UK Government-funded drugs education programme consisting of five components: drug education in … Continue reading
Posted in Adequate scope, Causal inference, Causal inference strategies, Education, Evaluation team composition, Evaluative questions & answers, Government programs, Learning from failure, The client's role
Tagged Causal inference, comparisons, drug education, government, sample size, statistical power, UK
1 Comment
Friday Funny – How impact really works
“When people laugh, it is easier for them to admit new ideas to their minds.” (Dalai Lama, in an interview with John Cleese).
Terry Smutylo shows how serious issues in evaluation theory and practice can be communicated (and shared) in his song the “Output Outcome Downstream Impact Blues’. Check details for tour dates and the karoake version. Continue reading
Does excessive Internet use cause depression?
One of the challenges for genuine evaluation is striking a balance between being overly bold in statements and overly cautious. An example of an analysis that seems to strike this balance is in the Health: Best Treatments blog (a joint project of The British Medical Journal and The Guardian newspaper) of the limitations of recent research that reported:
About 1 in 100 people are ‘addicted’ to using the internet, and these people have a greater risk of becoming depressed. Continue reading
Posted in Causal inference, Health, Information Technology
Tagged Causal inference, depression
3 Comments
Jane at Real Evaluation
Patricia at CIRCLE (RMIT)