Creating Effectiveness Principles for Principles-Focused Developmental Evaluations in Health-Care Initiatives: Lessons Learned from Three Cases in British Columbia

Principles-focused developmental evaluation is an emergent method of evaluation that is increasingly achieving relevance in initiatives seeking to transform health-care delivery within complex-adaptive systems. Creating meaningful eff ectiveness principles is considered a crucial first step in setting up such evaluations. In this article, we describe four practical steps that we applied in defi ning eff ectiveness principles to align with Patton’s GUIDE criteria. To illustrate our approach, this article features three principles-focused developmental evaluations implemented in British Columbia, highlighting lessons learned through the process of creating eff ectiveness principles.