Carlisle Levine

This brief provides a background on contribution analysis and its applications, as well as walking through five case studies in which the authors have used contribution analysis to assess whether and how advocacy efforts made a difference.

Outcome Mapping is an approach that helps unpack an initiative’s theory of change and provides a framework to collect data on the immediate, basic changes that lead to longer, more transformative change. This allows for the plausible assessment of the initiative’s contribution to results.

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is an evaluation approach that supports causal reasoning by examining how different conditions contribute to an outcome.

Realist evaluation aims to identify the underlying generative causal mechanisms that explain how outcomes were caused and how context influences these.

Outcome Mapping is an approach that helps unpack an initiative’s theory of change and provides a framework to collect data on the immediate, basic changes that lead to longer, more transformative change. This allows for the plausible assessment of the initiative’s contribution to results.