How to evaluate – or commission an evaluation – when everything is messy

A recording of a recent CECAN webinar.

Presenters: Dione Hills (The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations) and Helen Wilkinson (Risk Solutions). Chaired by Martha Bicket (University of Surrey). This webinar shared insights from the work being undertaken by a team from CECAN (Centre for Evaluation of Complexity across the Nexus) who are developing guidance for evaluation practitioners and commissioners struggling with complex interventions. The guidance was requested by a government team of evaluators who are revising the Magenta Book (Cross government guidance on evaluation) as an annex to the main book. In the webinar, we described some of the key features of complexity that pose a challenge for evaluators, giving a number of suggestions and points to bear in mind commissioning and designing an evaluation of a complex intervention, and when trying to decide what evaluation approaches and methods might be most useful. There were over 100 participants – mostly attending online, but with a small group of Tavistock Institute staff attending in person. The presentation, and discussion of several interesting – and challenging – questions that were posed by participants can be watched above or on the CECAN website.