Special Invited Editorial

Abstract

For anyone starting out on their journey in applying realist research approaches, varying degrees of mind unbending will indeed be needed. This has certainly something I have had to do in my own journey and found when helping others along in theirs. What I hope to achieve in this editorial is not to dictate to you the precise details of how your journey should be undertaken but more to provide tips and pointers that will assist you on the way. To start, it is worth appreciating that there are many ‘‘schools’’ of realist research with a bewildering array of names. Each has interpreted and applied the works of the ‘‘father’’ of realism, Roy Bhaskar (Bhaskar, 1978, 1979), slightly differently. The result is they each do things differently for differing reasons. The implication is that a researcher wanting to use a realist approach must first decide on which ‘‘school’’ to follow. Once selected, while there may be some leeway in interpretation and/or application, the followers of the chosen realist school will have certain ontological, epistemological, conceptual, and methodological expectations. Make sure you understand what these expectations are at the start of your journey. Following a certain school will take you down a different path, though these paths may overlap in parts. The path I want to now travel along is that of the realist approaches, realist evaluation (Pawson & Tilley, 1997), and realist review (or synthesis—the terms are synonymous; Pawson, 2006). Some of what follows applies only to realist evaluation and/or realist reviews, but where there are wider implications, I will point these out. Common to all realist approaches is a need to unbend the mind in terms of conceptualizing how the world is constituted or ‘‘works’’—that is, our ontological assumptions. Most realists share the view that hidden, context-sensitive mechanisms cause outcomes, that the world is stratified, and that our knowledge can only ever be partial (Astbury & Leeuw, 2010). Everything else are embellishments of these assumptions. These assumptions drive much of the thinking among realists about knowledge claims and methodology. Failure to understand the realist assumptions within each school is something to be avoided as in my experience has often led to misapplication and/or unwarranted knowledge claims. The tip here is to prepare for the journey. Make sure you understand realism before setting out. In particular, make sure you know what realist mechanisms are and are not! Specifically, for realist evaluation and realist reviews, I want to raise your awareness of five potential conceptual obstacles that you may face on your journey, namely—program theory, context (C), mechanism (M), outcome (O), and context–mechanism–outcome–configurations (CMOCs). Providing detailed methodological guidance is beyond the scope of this editorial, my intention is more to arm you with overarching strategies to ease your journey. Program theory is very helpful—it can both guide what you need to do before and during your project and provide explanations of how and why intervention components work and how and why they may be optimally implemented. Take time to develop one (or more as needed). The key here is to have an educated guess early on, for example, in planning the project or once you have started. It does not matter if it is incomplete or even if it does not seem that realist in nature. The point of your