Introduction

Enormous efforts and funds have been spent to increase diversity in higher education in places like the United Kingdom. However, the impact of these efforts could be greater. One avenue to enhance impact is being more careful in how activities are designed, drawing on a Theory of Change (ToC) and evaluating their impact.

The idea behind this book was initially to help build a common lexicon and understanding of ToC as an approach to the evaluation of access and widening participation (WP) problems in higher education (HE). We knew that evaluation had grown in significance in English HE since the early 2010s. A weakness of prior national infrastructure has been the temptation to ‘do’ the intervention first, retrospectively monitor its progress, establish target and speak in some way about its impact. This had been characteristic of Aimhigher, a national, regional and sub-regional WP initiative which struggled in debates around its purpose and success by failing to coherently evidence its effectiveness. As Doyle and Griffin (2012) show in their analysis of evaluations of Aimhigher's work, the late establishment of targets and difficulties accessing and monitoring data sets cumulatively meant that Aimhigher had difficulty proving the extent to which it had ‘widened participation and contributed to improvements in social justice’ (Doyle & Griffin, 2012, pp. 81–82). Ultimately leading to Aimhigher's swift closure in 2010, as part of the government's rapid austerity measures (BBC News, 2010).