Description

The Validation theme is all about the support that exists for the impact rationale of the ToC. Through a validation process, you ensure the rationale is credible, persuasive and can hold up on scrutiny.Validation involves making underlying assumptions explicit and testing them, by collecting evidence and building up arguments. Validation and Progress are thus interrelated.

Validation particularly applies to the relationships within a ToC, such as: “Why do you think a particular outcome leads to or affects another change?” It also applies to blocks, such as: “Why do you expect a certain contextual factor to maintain a certain status quo?”

A deeper understanding of the ToC elements and their relationships shows the connections with other actors and the wider context. It helps to understand more profoundly why your organisation does what it does to contribute to your Vision of Success in the context you operate in.

Testing Probability

A quality ToC is credible and persuasive. This requires testing the probability of the change process to evolve as you expect it to. Finding out whether the assumptions you make about ToC elements and their relationships can be expected to hold true.

Validating and testing the probability of the probability of your ToC involves three steps:

Develop arguments: the elements and relationships in your ToC are the building blocks to formulate convincing arguments that explain the logic in your change story. “If X happens, then Y will happen, because we expect Z to take place.” Such an “If”, “Then”, “Because” statement provides a logical line of argumentation and is often in itself already intuitive and convincing.
Identify assumptionsSee the Expert Lens on Assumptions for more information: Intervention stakeholders (donors, managers, staff, but also implementing partners, beneficiaries, etc.) all have their beliefs and expectations as to how change should and will work.[2] ToCs build upon such assumptions. These can be beliefs, worldviews and unproven expectations about stakeholder relationships, desired results and necessary conditions for change to occur. It’s important to make the assumptions underlying your ToC explicit, to be aware of them and to continue to test whether they (still) hold true.
Document evidence: the information you have about ToC elements, relationships or assumptions are needed to substantiate your arguments. This evidence may come from academic theory and research, empirical data, good practice illustrations from the field and also professional experience of the stakeholders involved.

Stakeholder Engagement

Social organisations

As a social organisation, you have the opportunity to have your validity claims scrutinized by external stakeholders. Stakeholders may engage to critically examine the validity claims and add their perspectives. They can do so in multiple ways:

Examining existing arguments and evidence critically, contributing their experiences to assess whether and why the organisation’s intervention is expected to work or not. A stakeholder may have used the same approach in a similar context with negative results.
Adding new arguments and evidence to support or challenge the organisation’s rationale. A stakeholder may for example point to sources of evidence that the organisation is unaware of.
Bringing to light assumptions that the ToC takes for granted but are not necessarily true and do affect the success of the ToC. After all, stakeholders bring their own experiences and know-how to the table and may reveal assumptions that the organisation has become blind to or is unaware of.

Stakeholders

As a stakeholder, you have the opportunity to share your experience and expertise in social change processes and learn about the societal value creation strategies of social organisations. By engaging you may explore current discourses and latest insights on a range of social change rationales. Some validity claims will turn out to be well supported by evidence, others less so. This is where you can bring lots of value added. You can do so in multiple ways:

Examining existing arguments and evidence critically, contributing your experiences to assess whether and why the organisation’s intervention is expected to work or not. Note: Do bear in mind this content page is about objective observations and please use the discussion board in case of more subjective experiences.
Adding new arguments and evidence to support or challenge the organisation’s rationale. You may for example point to sources of evidence that the organisation is unaware of.
Bringing to light assumptions that the ToC takes for granted but are not necessarily true and do affect the success of the ToC. After all, you bring your own experiences and know-how to the table and may reveal assumptions that the organisation has become blind to or is unaware of.

Questions to Ask

Developing Argumentation

Within each Pathway, what is the essence of the change logic? Is it possible to develop brief, top-level If-Then-Because statements?
For each relationship in our ToC: why do we think X will lead to Y?
Is X sufficient to make Y happen? How do we account for other changes to be in place?
Are there also arguments against the relationship?
- Are there contesting ToCs?
- If so, what do we expect as net effect and why?

Identifying Assumptions

Which fundamental ideas, or worldviews, about the context, the social actors or the change process are part of the ToC? What are we taking for granted about:
- the political, economic, social, legal circumstances and emerging realities?
- social actors and their roles, interests, local preferences, responses, and capacities?
- people’s motivations to act, participate and change?
- the local population’s interests and responses to the intervention?
Which causal relationships are assumed in the change process?
- Which ones are backed by evidence and which ones lack such evidence?
- What are our beliefs, ideas or expectations that explain the causal relationships?
- For each relationship, if X happens, will Y then (always) really be the result? What does this depend on and is this likely to be the case? (If, Then, Because statements)
To be effective, do we need anything specific in place or to be avoided in our political, economic or organisational context?
Check your ToC for the four types of assumptions as presented in the Expert Lens on assumptions

Documenting Evidence

What kinds of qualitative information would support or oppose the arguments, relationships and assumptions in our ToC?
Is there external (scientific) research available that investigates the arguments, relationships and/or assumptions in our ToC?
What are the experiences on the ground that support or oppose the arguments, relationships and assumptions in our ToC?
- Which organisations have ToCs with similar arguments, relationships and assumptions?
- What experiences might they have documented that may validate part of our ToC?
- Which organisations may have researched similar situations but perhaps in other contexts?
- Which organisations worked in similar contexts on different thematic areas or social issues?
Is internal research or data available within our organisation or within partner organisations to empirically test arguments, relationships and or assumptions?
- Can we conduct research ourselves to test and monitor relationships?
- Can we combine available data sources to gather the necessary data?
- Can we systematically collect and analyse them to test and build support for our rationale?

What to Describe

In a short narrative you may note down your reflections on checking the validity claims in your ToC. Briefly describe per step some key insights from developing your arguments, identifying your assumptions and documenting the evidence. In addition to the argument, assumption or evidence itself you may also want to include the following information:

On Assumptions

Differences in perspectives on the assumption, if any.
Risk assessment: the likelihood and impact of an assumption proving false.
Mitigation strategies: the measures taken to reduce risks.
How to further examine and possibly validate the assumption.

On Evidence

Reference/source. For example a link to a research article or report, which one can read to assess the quality of the research.
If evidence originates from a different context than your ToC operates in, explain its applicability to your own context.

Expert Lenses

Community Guidelines

To make sure the Changeroo platform is a powerful vehicle for change, we’ve put together a few ground rules.

Content pages focus on consensus, integration of information and objective facts, instead of repetition and endless texts. Social organisations can open up these pages to stakeholder feedback and input.

Guidelines

Share your expertise and resources to be of influence and help social organisations move their social mission forward. Seek opportunities to contribute that align with your own values. Present yourself through your contributions.
Learn from stakeholders’ feedback and improve your understanding of an organisation.
Be constructive in your criticism.
Be open to disagreement and listen to other people’s opinions. Change happens when people with different backgrounds and perspectives can participate in a conversation.
Be reasonable, kind, respectful and use common sense.
Do not use hate speech, do not impersonate others, do not violate others’ privacy, do not bully, do not be unnecessarily graphic, do not spam and do not break the law (which includes respecting copyrights in your posts).
Update your ToC with developments. When you’re candid with stakeholders and tell them what we do and don’t know and make them part of the process, it’s much more engaging for them.