Applying a longitudinal tracer methodology to evaluate complex interventions in complex settings

Abstract

Long-running multi-faceted intervention studies are particularly problematic in large complex organizations where traditional methods prove too resource intensive and can yield inaccurate and incomplete findings. This paper describes the first use of, longitudinal tracer methodology (LTM), a realist approach to evaluation, to examine the links between multiple complex intervention activities (processes) and their outcomes on a construction megaproject. LTM is especially useful when the researcher has little control over intervention delivery but has evidence drawn from multiple sources to evaluate the intervention activities effects over time. This methodology has rarely been deployed in complex organisational settings and not on a construction megaproject. This paper presents a case study of its use over a period of three years, on 24 construction sites forming London's Thames Tideway Tunnel (Tideway) megaproject. The study examines the 'transformational' power of occupational safety and health (OSH) interventions across the multiple organisations and supply chains in the megaproject. The study shows how the method can be adapted in-flight to accommodate shifting lines of inquiry as the intervention activities progress and change. This feature along with its resource efficient operation, make it any attractive option where interventions are likely to have differential effects across multiple sites of enactment.

Sustaining and embedding: a strategic and dynamic approach to workplace wellbeing

“…Much of the current literature on health and wellbeing interventions focuses on discrete interventions and individual health and wellbeing outcomes (Burgess et al, 2020) underpinned by rational models of planned change (cf. Mintzberg, 1994) with a tendency to view the organization as a field or context within which workplace health and wellbeing practices take place (Russell et al, 2016), rather than seeing an intervention as one element of a stream of organisational actions that address multiple, sometimes conflicting priorities (Fuller et al, 2019). In contrast, in the current chapter, we outline a model of how organisations sustain and embed patterns of workplace wellbeing practices over the longer term in coherent and strategic programmes.…”