Principle: Audience stakeholders with an interest in, or an expectation of, an outcomes hierarchy being achieved will demand a lower level of intervention attributional proof - Audience stakeholders differ as to the level of proof they demand regarding proof of attribution of change in high-level outcomes to an intervention. Audience stakeholders with an interest in, or an expectation of, an outcomes hierarchy being achieved will generally have lower demands in this respect than those whose interests conflict with the achievement of the outcomes hierarchy or who do not have expectations that the outcomes hierarchy will be achieved. [Provisional only].
Discussion: Audience stakeholders are those stakeholders who have an interest in regard to the results of any monitoring or evaluation of an outcomes system. In many outcomes system there is contention between sub-groups within the community of users regarding whether or not intervention attribution has been established to a sufficient level of proof. In general, those who either have an interest in an outcomes hierarchy being achieved or an expectation that it will be achieved will tend to accept a lower level of proof. The converse applies to those who do not have an interest in the outcomes hierarchy being achieved and/or an expectation that it will not be achieved.
Principle: Participant stakeholders interest in, or expectation of, an outcomes hierarchy being achieved should be regarded as an additional intervention. [Provisional only]
Discussion: Participant stakeholders are those stakeholders who are actually involved in the implementation of an intervention or the monitoring or evaluation of an outcomes system. Participant stakeholders can also be audience stakeholders. Past experience in undertaking evaluations has shown that evaluation results can be results of a number of evaluations can be influenced by the expectations of the evaluation researchers (experimenter bias) and also by the expectations of actual participants in an intervention (placebo effect/Hawthorne effect). Therefore in some cases, specific evaluation designs have been developed to attempt to prevent these effects influencing evaluation results. The best known of these is the double-blind randomized controlled trial. The placebo/Hawthorne effect is relatively easy to control for in some cases, e.g. in pharmaceutical studies it is often possible to provide a placebo pill which patients believe is active. In other cases, it is more difficult. These cases include pharmaceutical studies where the placebo's lack of side-effects may alert patients to the fact that they have been given a placebo. The the problem becomes even more acute in the case of social programs where it is not obvious how to provide a control condition which somehow is credible enough to raise participant expectations to the same level as the intervention while, at the same time, not in any other way constituting an intervention. Within outcomes theory, participant stakeholders' interests and expectations are recognized by regarding them as an additional intervention within an outcomes hierarchy. The issue of attributing changes in high-level outcomes to these "interventions" are the same as the general issue of attributing change to any intervention within an outcomes hierarchy. As with any intervention, it may or may not be feasible, timely or affordable to make such an attribution. [Provisional only]
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