Introduction to Realist Evaluation for Social Services (July 2025)
Registration
Interested applicants can register for the workshop via NUS L3AP Portal. Registration will start in May 2025.
About
The course is designed to provide social service professionals, community workers, policy-makers and researchers, with an introduction to theories and concepts of realist evaluation.
In community development and other fields of practice, interventions are often described as being complex and have outcomes that are dependent on context and are challenging to evaluate. Realist evaluation can help make sense of the outcomes from these types of interventions. Instead of providing one-off verdicts on its success or failure by asking, “Does the intervention work?”, realist evaluation examines “What works, for whom, under what circumstances and why?”. Recognising that interventions do not work in the same way for everyone, everywhere, realist evaluation seeks to systematically develop and test theory, specifically the causal mechanisms that are activated in different contexts, leading to different outcomes. It is multi-method and draws on both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Trainer
Dr Robyn Tan is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, LKYSPP, NUS. Her research interests include studying the implementation of programmes, policies and interventions in real world policy and service settings. She has a keen interest in theory-driven evaluations, specifically, applying realist research to understand what works, for whom, under what conditions, and why. Robyn is an adjunct faculty with the Geriatric Education and Research Institute (GERI) where she is involved in implementation research of healthcare interventions, to facilitate their translation into practice.
Course Fee
This course is SSG-approved. Participants who are Singaporeans or Singaporean Permanent Residents will be eligible for subsidies of 70% of the course fees, excluding GST. Singaporean participants who are aged 40 years old and above will be eligible for higher subsidies of up to 90% of course fees. Corporate-sponsored participants from SMEs will be eligible for higher subsidies of up to 90% of course fees. Participants must pass all assessment components, to be eligible for SSG funding. The table below shows the breakdown of the course fee payable.
Course Fee Breakdown
