Evaluation is essential for all types of intervention

doi:10.1136/bmj.324.7332.300a

BMJ 2002;324:300 ( 2 February )

Letters

Evaluation is essential for all types of intervention

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Clark's plea for home visits by health visitors to be excluded from evaluation by randomised controlled trials cannotbe accepted.¹ His objections $---$ the limitations of meta-analyses,the problems of confounding particularly where complex socialfactors are involved, and the selection of outcome measures $---$ applyto many other interventions. The acceptance of randomised controlledtrials does not preclude other methods ofevaluation.

Complex social interventions can be and have been evaluated despite the difficulties as Oakley described in her review ofthe rise and fall of evaluation of social interventions.² Shenoted that one of the main reasons for the decline in evaluationwas the apparent ineffectiveness (and in some cases adverse effects)of some of the favoured interventions, and concluded that expertsin the social domain, like those in medicine, have resisted thenotion that rigorous evaluation of their work is more likely togive reliable answers than . . . [Full text of this article]