Abstract

PARRA, Juan David  and  VIEIRA, Camilo. Design Thinking and The Evaluation of Social Interventions: Towards a Realist Dialogue. Desafíos [online]. 2023, vol.35, n.1, e04.  Epub Oct 27, 2023. ISSN 0124-4035.  https://doi.org/10.12804/revistas.urosario.edu.co/desafios/a.12199.

While the literature reports increasing interest in the applications of Design Thinking (DT) in the field of public administration in general, a gap persists in academic reflections about the specific role of DT in informing policy and program evaluation. This article makes a conceptual and methodological contribution to this last debate. Part of the proposed reflection is meta-theoretical, allowing the identification of commonalities between the epistemological foundations of the DT and one evaluation school, in particular: pragmatic evaluation. In a second analytical moment, the text examines some epistemological limitations of pragmatism (as a research paradigm) to ground causal conclusions in social inquiry. This is not a trivial matter since the very essence of evaluation is, precisely, the identification of causal dynamics unleashed by social interventions. It is possible to amend some of these problems in a DT-based evaluation by adopting some epistemological principles from Critical Realism. A brief discussion of two applied evaluations of education interventions in Colombia led by the authors serves to illustrate some methodological implications of these last arguments.

Keywords : Design thinking; public administration; pragmatism; critical realism; realist evaluation; Colombia.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )