Participatory impact pathways analysis

Template:Linkless People act on the basis of their understanding of how the world works -- their "theories of action" (Argyris and Schön, 1974). This applies to projects and programs. If you can improve a program's theory you can improve its implementation. Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) is an approach by which the participants in a project (project and program are used synomously from now on), including project staff, key stakeholders and the ultimate beneficiaries, together co-construct their program theory. This theory describes plausible impact pathways by which project outputs are used by others to achieve a chain of outcomes leading to a contribution to eventual impact on social, environmental or economic conditions. Impact pathways are a type of logic model, that is they constitute a model that describe the logic of what the project will do, is doing, or what it did.

Use of PIPA

Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis (PIPA) was first used in a workshop in January 2006 in Ghana, with seven projects funded by the Challenge Program on Water and Food. Nine PIPA workshops have been held since then for 46 projects. A paper describing the approach has been accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation.

PIPA helps workshop participants surface, discuss and write down their assumptions and theories about how their project activities and outputs could eventually contribute to desired goals such as poverty reduction. The description of these assumptions and theories is a description of the project’s (or program’s) impact pathways. PIPA has helped workshop participants with the following:

• Clarify and communicate the their own project’s logic of intervention and its potential for achieving impact
• Understand other projects and identify areas for collaboration
• Generate a feeling of common purpose and better programmatic integration
• Produce an impact narrative describing the project's intervention logic
• Produce a framework for subsequent monitoring and evaluation

When PIPA works best

PIPA is useful when two or more projects in the same program wish to better integrate. At least two people for each project should attend, preferably the project leader and some else who knows the project and has time and inclination to follow up on what comes out of the workshop. PIPA also works well when one project wishes to build common understanding and commitment from its stakeholders. In this case, two or more representatives from each important stakeholder group should attend.

The PIPA process

PIPA can be used at the beginning of a project, in the middle or at the end as way of documenting and learning from the project. PIPA describes project (or program) impact pathways in two ways: (i) causal chains of activities, outputs and outcomes through which a project is expected to achieve its purpose and goal; and (ii) networks of evolving relationships between project implementing organizations, stakeholders and ultimate beneficiaries that are necessary to achieve the goal. The workshop process, shown in the diagram, develops the two perspectives in turn and then integrates them. The workshop begins with participants developing a problem tree that links the problems the project is directly addressing with the social, environmental and/or economic conditions it wishes to address.

After the workshop the outputs can be written up in an impact narrative, similar to John Mayne’s (2004) performance stories, and/or can be used to develop an evaluation plan.

The novelty claimed for PIPA is: 1) the use of social network analysis concepts and software to make explicit participants' theories about the evolving networks of actors needed to achieve the project's vision; and, 2) the integration of this perspective with plausible outcome chains linking the use of project outputs to eventual impact.

References

1. The Participatory Impact Pathways Analysis Wiki contains more information about PIPA and many more references than listed here

2. The main reference for PIPA is this journal article Douthwaite, B., Alvarez, B.S., Cook, S., Davies, R., George, P., Howell, J., Mackay, R. and Rubiano, J. (Accepted). The Impact Pathways Approach: A Practical Application of Program Theory in Research-for-Development . Submitted to the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation

3. PIPA grew out of work in Northern Nigeria described in these two articles Douthwaite, B., Schulz, S., Olanrewaju, A., Ellis-Jones, J. (2007). [Impact pathway evaluation of an integrated Striga hermonthica control project in Northern Nigeria. Agricultural Systems. 92 pp 201-222

4. Douthwaite, B., T. Kuby, E. van de Fliert and S. Schulz. (2003). Impact Pathway Evaluation: An approach for achieving and attributing impact in complex systems. Agricultural Systems 78 pp243-265

5. This is the key reference for developing impact narratives based on the output of a PIPA workshop Mayne, J. 2004. Reporting on outcomes: setting performance expectations and telling performance stories. The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation Vol. 19 (1) pp. 31-60

6. This is the key reference for the use of causal analysis / problem trees in the PIPA process Renger, R. and Titcomb, A. 2002. A Three-Step Approach to Teaching Logic Models American Journal of Evaluation. 23: 493-503

Bdouthwaite 21:51, 3 September 2007 (UTC)