This episode accompanies Module 3 of the course, which is all about acquiring evidence from practitioners – people who have experience with the problem we are tackling, or the solutions we are considering.
Modules 3 and 4 are somewhat intertwined, so the rest of the discussion about practitioner evidence will be in Episode 4. In this episode we consider the choice of practitioners (people with expertise, not just opinions) and how we gather information from them. Asking questions (the focus of Module/episode 2 is critical here, and emphasis is again put on not jumping to solutions, even though it’s so tempting!
There is also discussion about the use of questionnaires – including some guidance about where to start (at the end) and how to get the best results - keeping the questions simple, testing understanding of the questions before launch and ensuring you know exactly how you’re going to use the data.
Host: Karen Plum
Guests
- Eric Barends, Managing Director, Center for Evidence Based Management
- Denise Rousseau, H J Heinz University Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
- Dr Christina Rader, Associate Professor with Tenure, Department of Economics and Business at Colorado College
- Dr Lisa J Griffiths, CEO, OzChild National Support Office
Find out more about the course here: https://cebma.org/resources-and-tools/course-modules/
In 2025 we updated two episodes to reflect changes in CEBMa's online Evidence-Based Management course:
- Episode 5 - acquiring evidence from the scientific literature (updated in June 2025); and
- Episode 12 - aggregating the evidence sources (updated in December 2025)
