| Session Title: Understanding and Evaluating Complex Programs and Policies: A Focus on New Approaches and Innovative Methods |
| Expert Lecture Session 258 to be held in Pacific C on Thursday, Nov 3, 10:45 AM to 11:30 AM |
| Sponsored by the Quantitative Methods: Theory and Design TIG |
| Chair(s): |
| Melvin Mark, Pennsylvania State University, m5m@psu.edu |
| Presenter(s): |
| Sanjeev Sridharan, University of Toronto, sridharans@smh.ca |
| Abstract: As a means of addressing social and health problems, complex policies and programs have continued to proliferate. This expert panel will review methods and designs that are increasingly used to evaluate COMPLEX interventions. The focus will be on quantitative methods and designs but also on how quantitative methods can be integrated with qualitative methods. The expert panel will focus on the following: (1) Types of methods that might be useful in describing and understanding the nature of complexity; (II) How such methods help understand the CONTEXT of impact; one of the features of the panel will be on understanding the dynamic and spatial nature of such contexts; (III) How best to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods to address problems of complexity; (IV) How such methods can be useful to understand impacts. This discussion will take place within a context of a framework that can help intervention planners to move from interventions that are very complex initially to a few well chosen components-a "learning from principled discovery approach" (Mark et al., 2000) will be discussed as a means of addressing problems of complexity |