Twenty years ago, Ray Pawson and Nick Tilley published the seminal text, ‘Realistic Evaluation’. Pointing out that evaluating an initiative provided no reliable information about whether its effects would be the same if extended to a different location or group, they posed a new central question: “What works for whom in what circumstances, and how?”

That insight underpinned methodological developments including realist review (the realist form of systematic literature review), rapid realist review (developed with the intent to provide more timely findings for policy makers), international standards for realist evaluation and for realist review, and the adaptation of specific methods to suit particular investigations. Together, these developments have shifted the terrain in research and evaluation, for those who do research and evaluation and those who commission and use it.

Right from that first text, a central premise, and promise, has been that realist approaches would be useful for policy and programs. By increasing understanding of how, when and why policies and programs do and do not work, policy makers and practitioners would be better able to select appropriate approaches for particular contexts, and to adapt their policies and programs to different contexts. 

Now that we have had 20 years to translate that promise into practice, we want the posters and presentations at this conference to answer realist questions about realist methods.