4. Evaluating Understanding: Endogenous Project Evaluation Using Practice-Based Interaction Analysis (PIA)

Carlin and Murdoch argue that when a programme involves talk, then talk should form the locus of evaluation. This offers an alternative to current evaluation methods applied to talking therapy programmes. Drawing upon ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Carlin and Murdoch demonstrate practice-based interaction analysis (or PIA) for evaluating talking therapy programmes. The turn-taking organisation of talk provides criteria that are already being used by participants within their talk, which can be utilised as bases for evaluation. Excerpts from programme data highlight how ‘claims to’ and ‘displays of’ understanding demonstrate truly endogenous evaluations. Carlin and Murdoch argue that adjacently paired turns at talk demonstrate how participants themselves evaluate in situ understandings, thus developing evaluation criteria derived from participants’ activities rather than exogenous evaluation criteria.