intelligent measurement

I’ve written previously about work that others and myself have done on evaluating communication and advocacy campaigns, particulary concerning campaigns that aim for both changes in individual behaviour and government/private sector policies.

In this area, here is an interesting article from the Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation, “Advocacy Impact Evaluation” (pdf) by Michael Q. Patton. The article explains how an evaluation was undertaken to evaluate the impact of an advocacy campaign to influence a decision of the US Supreme Court.

What I find interesting is how the evaluation was done - what is called the “General Elimination Method”.

This is where there is an effect (the Supreme Court decision) and an intervention (the advocacy campaign) and they search for connections between the two. They tried to eliminate alternative or rival explanations until the most compelling explanation remained. They did this through interviews, analysis of news, documents and the Court’s decision. The article explains all of this and makes for interesting reading, you can read the article here (pdf).

Glenn