Conceptualising causal pathways in systematic reviews of international development interventions through adopting a causal chain analysis approach

ABSTRACT

Understanding the extent to which an intervention ‘works’ can provide compelling evidence to decision makers, although without an accompanying explanation of how an intervention works, this evidence can be difficult to apply in other settings, ultimately impeding its usefulness in making judicious and evidence-informed decisions. In this paper, we describe logic models as a tool for outlining graphically a hypothesis of how an intervention leads to a change in an outcome through depicting a causal chain of events. However, it is the nature of these connecting relationships and their basis in causality which is of interest here, and we focus on complex causal relationships and the way in which contextual factors reflecting the intervention setting or population may moderate these. Evidence synthesis techniques are considered, and their usefulness in analysing different parts of the causal chain or different types of relationship. The approaches outlined in this paper aim to assist systematic reviewers in producing findings that are useful to decision makers and practitioners, and in turn help to confirm existing theories or develop entirely new ways of understanding how interventions effect change

KEYWORDS:

• Evidence synthesis
• causal chain analysis
• logic models
• systematic reviews
• causality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by The Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning (CEDIL), an academic consortium initiative supported by UKAID through the Department for International Development (DFID).

Notes on contributors

Dylan Kneale

Dylan Kneale is a Principal Research Fellow at University College London. His research broadly involves synthesising evidence for social policy and developing methods to enhance the use of evidence in decision making. Methodologically, his interests currently lie in developing methods to assess and enhance the generalisability of systematic review and meta-analyses findings to specific and defined populations, as well as in the use of large datasets. Substantively he is interested in demography, public health and social exclusion and he leads a module exploring Ageing and Society for undergraduate students.

James Thomas

James Thomas is Professor of Social Research & Policy at the EPPI-Centre, UCL London. His research is centred on improving policy and decision-making through the use of research. He has written extensively on research synthesis, including meta-analysis and methods for combining qualitative and quantitative research in ‘mixed method’ reviews; and also designed EPPI-Reviewer, software which manages data through all stages of a systematic review, which incorporates machine learning/AI. He is PI of the Evidence Reviews Facility for the Department of Health, England – a large programme of policy-relevant systematic reviews with accompanying methodological development. He is co-lead of the Cochrane ‘Project Transform’ which is implementing novel technologies and processes to improve the efficiency of systematic reviews, and Co-I on a major Collaborative Award from Wellcome, led by Susan Michie (UCL), to develop novel technologies to organise and present the behavioural science literature.

Mukdarut Bangpan

Mukdarut Bangpan is a Senior Lecturer in International Development and Evidence Synthesis at University College London. Her research interests include evaluation of social interventions, health and well-being of children and women in developing countries, and methodological development of systematic reviews. She has worked in various systematic review projects funded by Department for International Development (DFID), National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Department for Culture and Sport (DCMS), Wellcome Trust and the HM Treasury. She lectures on evidence synthesis, leads a module on International Development, and provides support to research teams for carrying out systematic reviews in various topics including education, international development, health, and social policy.

Hugh Waddington

Hugh Waddington is Senior Evaluation Specialist and currently Acting Head of 3ie’s Synthesis and Reviews Office. He has a background in research and policy, having worked previously in the Government of Rwanda, the UK National Audit Office and the World Bank, and before that with Save the Children UK and the Department for International Development. He is managing editor of the Journal of Development Effectiveness and co-chair of the International Development Coordinating Group (IDCG) of the Campbell Collaboration.

David Gough

David Gough is Professor of Evidence Informed Policy and Practice and former Head of Department of Social Science at University College London. He has previously worked at the University of Glasgow and Japan Women’s University. He has written extensively on child protection and abuse, but now spends most of his time on the study of methods for research synthesis and research use. He designs and delivers numerous short courses on systematic reviews and knowledge use in the UK and internationally.