Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 1) | страница 108

Evaluation, Contribution and Attribution

Dear Students of Social Work,
One of the perennial challenges of social policy, social work and social service
is being able to state categorically what the direct effect of an intervention
is. Equally challenging is the skill of describing specifically the behaviour for
measuring improvements. We also know that there can be improvements in
areas that are not measured. So the aim is to find a way to attribute directly
to the intervention, the measured improvements and the specified change.
To be frank, social work as part of the social sciences is not the only discipline
that has this challenge although it is probably more conservative in claiming
any credit for its professional work.
So let’s examine what the thorny issues are in evaluating interventions. In
essence, the debate is about how and to what extent it is possible to establish
causation in some of the social programs or interventions.

Tension between funders and providers
It must be acknowledged that expectations from donors and funders
often create an immediate tension. This is the tension between the funder
expectation for concrete results of impact to justify the funding or its renewal
and the provider or NGO struggling with showing proof of efficacy of their
intervention.
Neither is unjustified. The question to ask is how we can get the right balance
in ensuring that providers can account for presenting outcomes while taking
into consideration the complexity of the real world. We are always confronted
with the challenge of how to measure causation in widely varying and
frequently complex contexts and with limited resources. (How much resources
we should devote to evaluation in itself warrants a separate discussion.)

Attribution and Contribution
We all know that there are many interpretations of causation. A lot of people
talk about contribution and attribution to describe causation but these
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