Program Evaluation and Improvement: The IDEAS Framework

“Based on your experience, what are the barriers to improving the effectiveness of programs and services for young children and families facing adversity?” How would you respond to this opening question in the IDEAS Impact Framework from the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard?
The team developing the framework identified these four barriers:

• Typical research methods reveal how programs work on average for those who receive them – but ‘average’ doesn’t capture the variability across individuals.
  
  
• New programs, products, and services are often developed without input from practitioners and community members who could provide valuable input and feedback.
  
  
• Conventional approaches to evaluation often focus on proving rather than learning and improving.
  
  
• Program developers and innovators tend to work in isolation.
  
  

The IDEAS Impact Framework responds to these challenges with these steps:

I = Innovate to solve unmet challenges
D = Develop a clear and precise theory of change
E = Evaluate the theory of change
A = Adapt through fast-cycle iteration
S = Scale promising programs

One of the more intriguing steps is fast-cycle iteration: “Project teams using the IDEAS Impact Framework often start by engaging in a series of low-cost, relatively small-scale tests, enabling them to establish feasibility and begin to explore the intervention’s theory of change. Each fast-cycle iteration is an opportunity to make refinements, incorporate learning about what’s working and what isn’t, and move toward higher levels of evidence at an accelerated pace. The IDEAS approach to fast-cycle iteration is one of multiple rapid learning methods that have emerged in recent years.”

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