Evaluation and the evidence base for co-creation

This chapter summarises the evidence base for the impact of co-creation and related aspects of social policy such as asset-based working and personalisation. The evidence base for the impact and outcomes of co-creation is surprisingly weak. After many years of research and evaluation there is a dearth of robust, widely accepted evidence. The reasons are various. They include the interconnectedness and complexity of services, making it difficult to specify and agree measurable outcomes to evaluate. Another related factor is that objectives of co-creation may not be clearly formulated. There are also different views of what counts as convincing evidence. The relational dimension of services tends to favour context specific, experiential forms of evidence which perfectly fit co-creation as understood by many practitioners/advocates to meet demands of governments/public agencies for measures and outcome indicators. The chapter follows an overview of the evaluations undertaken in CoSIE. University based partners in each participating country evaluated the pilots, working with local partners who were locally responsive and flexible while following broad guidelines/common reporting elements. There were varied assumptions about what counts as good information and reliable evidence. Inspired by learning from the CoSIE project, we proffer a new strategy for evaluation of co-creative interventions in future.