Talk:Most significant change technique
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Suggested changes to the Limitations section
[edit]This section of the text needs revision: "Although the impact of the evaluation emerge in stories gathered from the community and other stakeholders, only certain individuals can be part of the story generation process. It is inevitable that some stories will not be considered and that the stories may not necessarily be representative of the entire community’s feelings."
1. The only reason why it might be the case that "only certain individuals can take part in the story generation process" would be where the community of concern was large and a sample of opinions needed to be taken, rather than a full "census". The possible need to sample is not specific to the use of MSC, it can also arise with other forms of data collection, like opinion surveys.
2. Once a set of participants is identified, MSC stories will be sought from all of them. Within a specific application of MSC it is not "inevitable that some stories will not be considered"
3. Yes, it may be the case that "stories may not necessarily be representative of the entire community’s feelings" if the participants are sample of a community population. This is a sampling design issue, not a problematic feature of MSC
I suggest the text quoted above be removed and be replaced by more relevant descriptions of the limitations of MSC.
Suggested alternative text re Limitations
1. MSC is a participatory process that emphasise dialogue. This can be time consuming. Both participants and facilitators of an MSC exercise may have other pressing demands on their time
2. The elicitation of individual MSC stories and the facilitation of discussions about multiple MSC stories both require some skill, in interviewing and small group facilitation
3. Participants will often have concerns and reservations about the meaning of "significance", the acceptability of subjectivity and the appearance of competition, which need to be addressed
4. The process as described by Davies and Dart in 2005 may be incompletely implemented. Changes may be adequately described but explanations of their significance may be cursory or absent (Step 4). MSC stories may be collected then not followed by a selection process (Step 5). Feedback of the choices made between a set of MSC stories, to the original providers of those stories, may be forgotten (Step 6)