Theory of Change (ToC) is a methodology or a criterion for planning, participation, adaptive management, and evaluation that is used in companies, philanthropy, not-for-profit, international development, research, and government sectors to promote social change. Theory of Change defines long-term goals and then maps backward to identify necessary preconditions.
Theory of Change explains the process of change by outlining causal linkages in an initiative, i.e., its shorter-term, intermediate, and longer-term outcomes. The identified changes are mapped – as the "outcomes pathway" – showing each outcome in logical relationship to all the others, as well as chronological flow and feedback loops. The links between outcomes are explained by "rationales" or statements of why one outcome is thought to be a prerequisite for another.
The innovation of Theory of Change lies (1) in making the distinction between desired and actual outcomes and (2) in requiring stakeholders to model their desired outcomes before they decide on forms of intervention to achieve those outcomes.
Theory of Change can begin at any stage of an initiative, depending on the intended use. A Theory of Change developed at the outset is best at informing the planning of an initiative. Having worked out a change model, practitioners can make more informed decisions about strategy and tactics. As monitoring and evaluation data become available, stakeholders can periodically refine the Theory of Change as the evidence indicates. A Theory of Change can be developed retrospectively by reading program documents, talking to stakeholders, and analyzing data. This is often done during evaluations reflecting what has worked or not in order to understand the past and plan for the future.
History
Origins
Theory of Change emerged from the field of program theory and program evaluation in the mid 1990s as a new way of analyzing the theories motivating programs and initiatives working for social and political change. Its earlier origins can be traced to Peter Drucker's articulation of Management by Objectives, popularized in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. Management by Objectives requires identifying higher-order Goals, and lower-order Objectives which, if achieved, are expected to result in the Goals being achieved. Theory of Change extends beyond Goals (commonly named Outcomes in Theory of Change terminology) and Objectives to include Impact – the anticipated result of achieving stated goals.
Theory of Change is focused not just on generating knowledge about whether a program is effective, but also on explaining what methods it uses to be effective. Theory of Change as a concept has strong roots in a number of disciplines, including environmental and organizational psychology, but has also increasingly been connected to sociology and political science. Within industrial-organizational psychology, Austin and Bartunek have noted that approaches to organizational development are frequently based on more or less explicit assumptions about 1) the processes through which organizations change, and 2) the interventions needed to effect change.
Development in evaluation practice
Within evaluation practice, Theory of Change emerged in the 1990s at the Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change as a means to model and evaluate comprehensive community initiatives. Notable methodologists, such as Huey-tsyh Chen, Peter Rossi, Michael Quinn Patton, Heléne Clark, and Carol Weiss, had been thinking about how to apply program theories to evaluation since 1980. The Roundtable's early work focused on working through the challenges of evaluating complex community initiatives. This work culminated in a 1995 publication, ‘New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives’. In that book, Carol Weiss, a member of the Roundtable's steering committee on evaluation, hypothesized that a key reason complex programs are so difficult to evaluate is that the assumptions that inspire them are poorly articulated. She argued that stakeholders of complex community initiatives typically are unclear about how the change process will unfold and therefore place little attention on the early and mid-term changes needed to reach a longer-term goal.