Theory of Change
A theory of change can be developed retrospectively by reading program documents, talking to stakeholders, and analyzing data.
[3] 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.
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.
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[citation needed].
[14] This has led to new areas of work, such as linking the Theory of Change approach to systems thinking and complexity.
They are also helping to understand and assess impact in hard to measure areas, such as governance, capacity strengthening and institutional development.
[15] 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.
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.
[18] In the early days of Theory of Change, Anne Kubisch and others established three quality control criteria.
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.
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.
The monitoring questions take the form of “What do we really need to know in order to manage grant-making directed to the achievement of this outcome?
An important task for monitoring and evaluation is to gather enough knowledge and understanding so as to be able to predict – with some degree of confidence – how an initiative and set of activities might work in a different situation, or how it needs to be adjusted to get similar or better results.
We also need to be able to combine evidence from a number of studies in order to build a stronger picture of what is taking place, how it is unfolding, and, most importantly, how context influences the initiative.
[24] Theory of Change also contrasts with logic models and logframes by beginning with a participatory process to clearly define desired outcomes and to air and challenge one another's assumptions.
Theory of Change can support collective visioning, foster a shared understanding between stakeholders, and bridge thought-styles and different ways of knowing.
Many organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development, have used a Results Framework and companion Scorecard as management tools.
The limitations of the Results Frameworks is that they do not show causal connections between conditions that need to change in order to meet the ultimate goals.
As a monitoring tool, a Theory of Change helps identify useful indicators to assess progress and can facilitate adaptive management.
It does this by stimulating learning about what strategies work in the specific research context, and where additional attention and resources need to be directed in order to achieve intended outcomes.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation proposes mapping an organization's social change work along three criteria: Impact, Influence, Leverage.
This approach could thereby help to avoid mapping outcomes involving broad shifts in behavior and values among whole populations, which are easy to think about, but are very difficult to monitor and to attribute to any one program.
[23] If the change model is instead treated as something to adjust as organizations learn what works from experience in the field, then the theory should not be at odds with strategic behavior.
If strategy is about seizing opportunities and trying out what works, the Theory of Change model serves as a guiding frame of reference.
Given that things don't happen in a straight-line sequence – as things impact each other in multiple, partly unpredictable ways, with all kinds of feedback loops that aren't modeled in a top-down diagramming format – an important question is: How adequate is the linear Theory of Change model as a description of what's going to happen?
Such a process model depicts the linear theory as a conceptual driver of change, which must, to remain useful, be accompanied not only by taking action but also by evaluation and recalibration.
[20] It is important to remember that it is often a high-level person who has endorsed and initiated the Theory of Change process as something of value, so they have “bought in” at the beginning.
There are many variations on the model but usually it involves good measures of delegation and, conversely, of reporting back to get the leader's thinking as the work progresses.
