As the practice of methodological bricolage (Aston & Apgar, 2022) is becoming more common, evaluators and commissioners are grappling with questions of methodological ‘fit’ and defining what ‘good enough’ looks like.
Learning across different philosophical, epistemological, and practical realities in which bricolage is practice is a necessary step to respond to this challenge and is part of the ongoing discussions and exchanges within the Centre for Development Impact’s community of practice.
What is methodological bricolage?
As we build the practice of systemic and equity-orientated evaluation in response to complex challenges, one-size-fits-all evaluations may no longer be enough.
Evaluators have to craft their evaluations not simply by choosing between different methods, but creatively combining and recombining methods. They may adopt certain parts of methods and skip or substitute recommended steps to suit the demands of multiple users navigating both normative and pragmatic constraints. Or they create a patchwork of relevant tools for different parts of an evaluation or throughout the cycle of designing, planning, monitoring, and evaluating a project.
This is known as methodological bricolage.
Our workshop: learning from methodological bricolage in practice
Our Solutions Workshop at EES we will share three promising examples of methodological bricolage, illustrating how different parts of methods can be combined from different methodological starting points. The objective is to reflect across the cases as well as participants’ experiences, to respond to the following framing questions:
- What should guide our decisions about which parts of methods to adopt, adapt or skip when designing an evaluation?
- How can we know if we are holding on to the ‘essence’ of a method (fidelity to its core tenets) as we combine with others?
- How can we know that a particular combination enables sufficient quality to meet the standards of commissioners and evaluators? What is ‘good enough’ under different constraints in time, resources and capacities?
See the European Evaluation Society Conference website for more information, including how to register.
Not going to be at EES? We will be publishing highlights from the session, and more on methodological bricolage, later this year.
