Realist Trials and Systematic Reviews
Rigorous, Useful Evidence to Inform Health Policy
Published on 28. February 2024
978-1-009-45662-3 (ISBN)
Description
This book describes an innovative approach to the evaluation of complex health interventions, assessing what interventions work, how and for whom. Rejecting the stalemate between trials and realist evaluation, it draws on the best of both. Randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews offer the least biased means of assessing intervention effects but tell us little scientifically about how interventions work. Policy-makers and practitioners are also not supported to decide which interventions are likely to achieve most benefits in their local contexts. Realists use other forms of evaluation and evidence synthesis exploring how intervention mechanisms interact with context to generate outcomes. But these approaches lack rigour in assessing causality. This book proposes how realist evaluation methods may be incorporated within randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews. This enables evaluations and evidence synthesis to benefit from the more nuanced questions posed within realist enquiry while maintaining rigour in assessing causality.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
File size
1,20 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-009-45662-3 (9781009456623)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Chris Bonell | G. J. Melendez-Torres | Emily Warren
Realist Trials and Systematic Reviews
Rigorous, Useful Evidence to Inform Health Policy
Book
02/2024
Cambridge University Press
€52.50
Shipment within 15-20 days
Persons
Content
1. Introduction; 2. Why are trials and systematic reviews necessary but insufficient to inform health policy?; 3. Realist critiques and manifesto for evaluation and reviews; 4. Building realist theory in evaluations; 5. Refining realist theory through process evaluations; 6. Testing realist theory through trials or other evaluation designs; 7. Building and refining realist theory in systematic reviews; 8. Testing realist theory through synthesising outcome evaluations; 9. Using evidence to inform intervention scale-up and transfer; 10. Using evidence to refine middle range theory; Conclusions.
