Enduring Themes in John Mayne’s Work: Implications for Evaluation Practice

Abstract

This paper focuses on three enduring themes in John Mayne’s work. They are causality; balancing learning and accountability as meta-objectives for evaluations; and program complexity. These themes are all central in his development and elaboration of contribution analysis. Although his work was aimed at practitioners, over time, the sophistication of his approach to evaluation raises challenges for practitioners, particularly given the structure of the evaluation field. The paper concludes with a suggestion to make contribution analysis more accessible, taking advantage of the work done by contributors to the Checklist Project at the University of Western Michigan.