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G. Fitzpatrick:
"Bridging the disciplinary divide - can we find shared evaluation approaches?";
Talk: Large scale evaluations in Health IT projects, Copenhagen, Denmark (invited); 2016-06-21.

Until recently HCI/CSCW/PD and medicine could be characterized as being at opposite ends of an evaluation continuum - from smaller-scale often bespoke evaluations often using mainly qualitative methods in HCI/CSCW/PD to large scale Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) using largely quantitative methods in medicine. Interestingly there have been recent moves on both sides of the disciplinary divide to recognise that current methods have limitations particularly when it comes to real world impact. I would like to explore some of the recent discussions in HCI/CSCW/PD about needing to connect more with medical approaches, and discussions in the medical literature about the limits of Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and the call for 'real EBM', and the limits of RCTs for evaluating complex interventions and the call for more 'realist evaluation' approaches. I will suggest that there is actually much in common at the intersection of these disciplines and am keen to explore these possibilities together with the workshop attendees.