This presentation was originally going to be given at the CABE Design and Planning Advice directorate away day on 23 March 2010 but there wasn't time. It sets out to briefly explain what logic models are, what they look like and how we can use them to enhance planning, management and evaluation in DAPA. (This is a truncated version - missing a worked example and consideration of how key messages relate to the CABE logic model template)

1. Using logic diagrams to
aid critical reflection
Paul Ducker, DAPA Day, 23 March 2010

2. What is a logic model?
“If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you
gonna’ know when you get there?”
Yogi Berra, Former major league baseball player and manager
• a logic model is a picture of how you believe your
programme will work
• it lays out what the programme is expected to
achieve, based on an identified chain of events
• it helps create shared understanding
• it enables you to anticipate the data and
resources you will need to achieve success

3. What do they look like?

4. What do they look like?
INPUTS ACTIVITIES OUTPUTS OUTCOMES IMPACT

5. How are they used?
“Most of the value in a logic model is in the process
of creating, validating and modifying the model....”
W.K.Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook (1998)
• during design and planning to help develop and
communicate programme strategy
• during programme implementation and
management to focus energy
• throughout development and delivery to ensure
evaluation and strategic reporting are
embedded and encourage reflection and learning.

6. Including assumptions
• A logic model only has to be logical and sequential
• It becomes more powerful when you say why you
expect the desired change to happen
• Adding the causal mechanism moves the model
from programme logic to programme theory

7. “A logic model brings program concepts and dreams to life”
W.K.Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide
“These models help build a common understanding between managers
and evaluation ... such agreement is a pre-requisite for evaluation work that
is likely to be useful to management. [These models] display the key events
(inputs, activities, outcomes) that could be monitored and the assumed
causal linkages that could be tested in evaluations of the program”
Joseph S. Wholey, Harry P. Haltry and K.E Newcomer quoted in W.K.Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide
“The idea that evaluation should include conceptualising and testing a
program’s theory of change emerged in the 1970s as part of a more general
concern about assessing a program’s readiness for evaluation........
evaluability assessment was the evaluator’s version of foreplay: getting the
program ready for the act itself - the act being evaluation”
Micheal Quinn Patton, Utilization-Focused Evaluation

8. Limits of logic (criticisms of logic models)
• Over simplifying complex problems
clear how model relates to wider environment)
(include assumptions, be
• Encourages narrow, linear thinking based on past
experience (start with need and desired outcomes, and then work back to activities)
• All very well but .... (start from the premise that evaluation is about helping focus
effort on the right things, not just be about reporting on progress to funders, otherwise it is not worth
the effort)

9. The end
Good luck