To do this, we use the Diagnosis – Intervention – Evaluation model.
To read about this in more detail and see some worked examples, open this PDF: Diagnosis-Intervention-Evaluation Model [PDF 137KB]
You can also find a shorter summary here: To train or not to train? [PDF 88KB]
This is what you want to see in an ideal world. Keep it positive! Avoid ‘I want people to stop doing/saying…’ – what do you want to see? What’s currently working well that you’d like to keep or expand on?
This is the ‘surface level’ issue or problem. It may have come about from colleague or student feedback, or from quantitative data (e.g. email response times).
It’s very difficult to know if anything has changed if you can’t describe where you’re starting from!
Some measures are very easy, for example: How much time or money does it take to do a particular task? What does your customer feedback say? What were your Staff Survey results on a given topic?
If you’re not measuring, how do you know there’s a problem? What is the impact?
What does this problem look like in practice? What effect is it having? If your problem is more abstract – ‘I feel like people aren’t…’ – what observations make you feel that way?
To get the details, you might need to speak to the people involved – the people the behaviours are impacting on, the people carrying out the behaviours, and their managers.
There are four main causes of a particular behaviour:
There’s usually more than one cause, and they can influence each other!
The most appropriate intervention will always depend on the underlying cause.
Knowledge & Skills interventions include:
Motivation & Environment issues usually can’t be resolved by learning or training. Interventions here might include:
Applying an intervention is an iterative (repeatable) process. If you’re trying something new, it’s a good idea to decide how long you’ll put it into practice for before reviewing your progress.
When evaluating, return to the measures you identified during diagnosis and use them to get an up-to-date picture of the situation. You can also gather information in other ways: for example, by speaking to the people directly impacted, and their stakeholders or customers.
After you’ve reviewed what your intervention has changed, you can decide to:
If your team or area has a development need, please contact opd@qmul.ac.uk with a brief outline. A member of our team will be in touch to discuss the situation in more detail and agree on a way forward.