Providing Credible Evidence For Singular Causal Claims

我们的第一个研究问题：什么证据有助于预测你所做的事情是否会产生你想要的结果--做X会产生Y吗？--或者以后评估它是否已经这样做了？为什么这可以算作证据？这些都是关于“单一因果关系”的问题(与因果概括形成对比)。目前的答案分散在不同的地方，它们往往没有很好的理论基础，而且往往是相互矛盾的。我们的分析表明，这是因为我们试图寻找证据的关系没有得到很好的理解。因此，为了回答我们的主要问题，我们的目标是发展一个丰富的单一因果关系理论：当一个原因成功(或不成功)产生结果时，什么通常是正确的？单一因果关系是哲学的一个中心问题--具有严重的现实意义。要在实践中判断一项干预是否会产生预期的结果，了解它是如何发挥作用的至关重要。我们的项目旨在提高对单一因果关系的理论和实践理解。因此，我们的目标是建立一个框架，对单一因果关系主张的证据进行分类，以帮助政策规划者和评估者(例如，学校校长、发展项目评估者、负责实施新的儿童保护计划的人)预测干预措施是否能够在当地实施并取得成功，或者在以后评估是否已经这样做了。我们将用案例研究来检验我们在实施儿童保护方案《安全迹象》方面的成功和失败，该方案的变革理论包括支持与家庭直接合作的变革所需的更广泛的系统性变革。门罗一直在对其在英国和爱尔兰的实施情况进行行动研究。也有关于其实施和各种成功的研究，我们可以使用。一个常见的问题是，重点放在直接与家庭一起工作的层面上，而没有考虑以与工作冲突的方式影响一线工作人员的组织因素(例如，记录要求与安全迹象的分析结构不匹配；组织信息对与儿童直接工作的优先程度低于安全迹象规定的优先顺序)。我们的研究将为高级管理人员提供指导，帮助他们更全面地了解可能需要改变的因素。类似的实施问题也出现在其他实践框架中，因此这项研究将为如何探索更广泛的系统的影响提供一个一般模型。这些更广泛的系统在哲学上被称为“机制”，在方法论中被称为“背景”，其中背景被视为一个复杂的系统，在不同的分析水平上研究的不同类型的原因交织在一起。已经开发了几种新的研究方法(例如，来自“现实主义评估”的上下文-机制-结果模型；关于“复杂社会系统”的新工作)。但对发挥作用的不同类型的机制的分析不足，这些类型需要在不同学科中研究不同的调查方法。我们的目标是在卡特赖特对哲学和循证政策研究中所见的三种因果机制的哲学分析的基础上，为这场辩论做出贡献：o一个原因产生其影响的循序渐进的过程，因此每个步骤产生提供因果过程的潜在系统的趋势。我们的项目将探索哪些方法适合于研究每种类型的机制所做出的不同类型的贡献，以便为因果预测和评估构建理论上有充分基础的“证据-角色图”的模板。这些地图绘制了与证明单一因果关系主张相关的信息种类，并表明了每种信息所起的作用。了解不同信息片段扮演的不同角色对于评估收集什么信息、丢失信息的风险以及证据的输入至关重要。

Our 1st research questions:What evidence helps predict if what you do will have the outcome you want-'Will doing X produce Y'?-or assess later if it has done so? Why does this count as evidence?These are questions about 'singular causation' (contrasted with causal generalisation). Current answers are scattered in different places, they tend not to be theoretically well-grounded and are often contradictory. Our analyses suggest this is because the relation we are trying to find evidence for is not well understood. So to answer our primary questions, we aim to develop a rich theory of singular causation:What's typically true when a cause succeeds (or not) in producing an outcome? Singular causation is a central concern of philosophy-one with serious practical significance. Understanding how it works is essential in judging in practice whether an intervention leads to desired outcomes. Our project aims to improve the theoretical and practical understanding of singular causation. From that we aim to produce a framework for cataloguing evidence for singular causal claims that can help policy planners and evaluators (eg heads of schools, evaluators of development projects, those charged with implementing new child-protection programmes) in predicting for their local setting if an intervention can be implemented and succeed there, or evaluating later if it has done so. We will use as a case study to test our ideas successes and failures in implementing the child protection programme Signs of Safety, whose Theory of Change includes wider systemic changes needed to support change in direct work with families. Munro has been conducting action research on its implementation in the UK and Ireland. There is also a body of research on its implementation and variable successes that we can use. A common problem is for the focus to be at the level of direct work with families without considering the organisational factors influencing front-line staff in ways that conflict with the work (eg recording requirements not matching the analytic structure of Signs of Safety; organisational messages giving lower priority to direct work with children than Signs of Safety specifies). Our study will produce guidance for senior managers to understand a fuller range of factors that may need changing. Similar implementation problems occur in other practice frameworks so the research will provide a general model of how to explore broader systems' influences.These broader systems are labelled 'mechanisms' in philosophy, 'context' in methodology, where context is seen as a complex system where causes of different types studied at different levels of analysis interweave. Several new research methods have been developed (eg the Context-Mechanism-Outcome model from 'realist evaluation'; new work on 'complex social systems'). But there is insufficient analysis of the different types of mechanism that play a role, types that call for different methods of investigation studied in different disciplines. We aim of to contribute to this debate by building on Cartwright's philosophical analysis of 3 types of causal mechanisms seen in philosophy and evidence-based policy research:o The step-by step process by which a cause produces its effectso The tendencies by which each step produces the nexto The underlying system that affords causal processes.Our project will explore what methods are suited to studying the different kinds of contribution each type of mechanism makes in order to construct templates for theoretically well-grounded 'evidence-role maps' for causal prediction and evaluation. These are maps charting the kinds of information relevant for evidencing singular causal claims and indicating the role each plays. Understanding the different roles that different bits of information plays is crucial in evaluating what information to collect, the risks of missing information, and the import of the evidence all told.