Hi Rick,
Thanks for sharing.
We spoke some time back about my OECD-linked development statistics data project thinking about the use of MSC in their outcome monitoring framework. They were quiet for a few months, but have come back to me asking about how it would practically look. This is a good sign.
On the paper, what a great initiative! My particular take-away, given the project I’m working on, is that MSC does not capture when change does not happen. This is probably the vast majority of cases.
Keep well,
Steve
--
If you have any concerns about any of the postings on this email list please email me directly at rick....@gmail.com
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MostSignificantChange (MSC) email list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mostsignificantchange-msc-...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mostsignificantchange-msc-2020-email-list/36a05b02-f223-4c22-a361-bc6ecd455c67n%40googlegroups.com.
Hi Stephen,
My experience is that MSC is able to identify real change well – both expected and unexpected. This is one of the reasons I use it so much, particularly where I believe the unexpected (and unplanned) changes will be important.
There are times when development interventions don’t achieve change for specific stakeholders. I believe that is OK and personally, I don’t want an evaluation tool to indicate changes that did not occur. So when MSC does not identify a change, I don’t have a problem with that provided:
Because, when done properly, MSC is harder for respondents to ‘fake’ answers (i.e give you the answer they think you want to hear), I also believe it is a good tool when you want to ensure this doesn’t happen. Another reason I use it a lot.
In my case, where an application of MSC has shown little change or only for a few, this has been important for the management of the intervention. It indicated that something wasn’t working as planned and needed to be changed. In particular, it often showed that specific stakeholder groups were not being well targeted. Change in delivery, change in MSC findings. That is a good outcome of an evaluation.
The other thing to remember is that MSC is a form of extreme case analysis – unless you analyse all the changes identified (which I do as part of a secondary analysis), MSC doesn’t tell you about averages. It tells you about extremes – hence the name – “MOST”. So if you only want to know about averages, other methods may be better. Almost every evaluation I undertake includes a component for management to learn what works and what doesn’t. This is usually done through the extremes, another reason I use MSC a lot.
Hope this helps.
Fiona
Dr Fiona Kotvojs GAICD
Design, Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist
Kurrajong Hill Pty Ltd
Phone: 0448 453 422
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/mostsignificantchange-msc-2020-email-list/LO2P265MB070123A3D83734F873D16326E8889%40LO2P265MB0701.GBRP265.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.