Book of the Month November: What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and Evaluation Practice?

[SAGE Publishing]

If you read this book tell us what you thought

[Betania Allen-Leigh]

I found the first chapter of this book, What Counts as Credible Evidence in Applied Research and Evaluation Practice?, incredibly ethnocentric. It is almost funny how ethnocentric it is, except that I also found the chapter fairly devoid of any ideas of interest or that were useful. After reading the introductory chapter, needless to say I would not buy the book or spend time reading it if it were in my library. Betania Allen-Leigh

[Gary Brown]

The first chapter does the usual business of introducing the book. I was looking or hoping for something a little less busy and a bit more integrative that we might sink our teeth into. It would be interesting to consider what key principles (rather than methods) are common and which are contested. For instance, causality, even from the perspective of an ethnocentric adherent of RCTs, seems worth exploring or interrogating. I suspect various chapters may address this, but there doesn’t seem to be enough here to launch a useful discussion.

I hope somebody might prove me wrong;-)

[Nick Stone]

Some of you may be interested in an article I wrote on the myopia that often dominates biomedical fields when called upon to evaluate phenomena that are a bit more complex than petri dishes (e.g. social adaptive systems)

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