Realist review

Summary (bullet points)

• It interrogates the literature to understand how an intervention produces its effects i.e. to explain what works, for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and why.
• A core element of a realist review is the development of a programme theory of how an intervention is supposed to work.
• A realist review adopts a generative approach to causation: to suggest a causal outcome (O) between two events (x and y), we need to understand the underlying mechanism (M) that links them and the context (C) in which the relationship occurs.