Abstract

The evidence used when making decisions about the design, implementation and evaluation in intervention programs should be meth-odologically sound. Depending on the context of the intervention, differ-ent methodologies may apply. Nonetheless, the intervention context is of-ten unstable and, to adapt to changing circumstances, it sometimes be-comes necessary to modify the original plan. The framework proposed herein draws on approaches that can be considered two extremes of a con-tinuum (experimental/quasi-experimental designs and studies based on observational methodology). In unstable intervention context conditions, this enables decisions from a methodological quality approach regarding design, measurement, and analysis. Structural dimensions, i.e., units (partic-ipants, users), treatment (program activities), outcomes (results, including decisions about the instruments to use and data gathering), setting (imple-mentation context) and time will be detailed as part of the practical frame-work. The present study aims to specify the degree of correspond-ence/complementarity between components in these structural dimen-sions of a program evaluation from a practical complementarity perspec-tive based on methodological quality.