Thanks for your question Simon, and it was very eagle-eyed of you to notice the difference in moral weights. Good sleuthing! (and more generally, thank you for provoking a very valuable discussion about StrongMinds)
I run SoGive and oversaw the work (then led by Alex Lawsen) to produce our moral weights. I’d be happy to provide further comment on our moral weights, however that might not be the most helpful thing. Here’s my interpretation of (the essence of) your very reasonable question:
“SoGive has a tendency to put a quite high value on tackling depression. Is this enough to explain why SoGive sounds like they might be more positive about StrongMinds than Simon M is?”
I have a simple answer to this: no, it isn’t.
Let me flesh that out. We have (at least) two sources of information:
Academic literature
Data from StrongMinds (e.g. their own evaluation report on themselves, or their regular reporting)
And we have (at least) two things we might ask about:
(a) How effective is the intervention that StrongMinds does, including the quality of evidence for it?
(b) How effective is the management team at StrongMinds?
I’d say that the main crux is the fact that our assessment of the quality of evidence for the intervention (item (a)) is based mostly on item 1 (the academic literature) and not on item 2 (data from StrongMinds).
This is the driver of the comments made by Ishaan above, not the moral weights.
And just to avoid any misunderstandings, I have not here said that the evidence base from the academic literature is really robust—we haven’t finished our assessment yet. I am saying that (unless our remaining work throws up some surprises) it will warrant a more positive tone than your post, and that it may well demonstrate a strong enough evidence base + good enough cost-effectiveness that it’s in the same ballpark as other charities in the GWWC list.
I don’t understand how that’s possible. If you put 3x the weight on StrongMind’s cost-effectiviness viz-a-vis other charities, changing this must move the needle on cost-effectiveness more than anything else. It’s possible to me it could have been “well into the range of gold-standard” and now it’s “just gold-standard” or “silver-standard”. However if something is silver standard, I can’t see any way in which your cost-effectivness being adjusted down by 1/3rd doesn’t massively shift your rating.
I’d say that the main crux is the fact that our assessment of the quality of evidence for the intervention (item (a)) is based mostly on item 1 (the academic literature) and not on item 2 (data from StrongMinds).
I feel like I’m being misunderstood here. I would be very happy to speak to you (or Ishaan) on the academic literature. I think probably best done in a more private forum so we can tease out our differences on this topic. (I can think of at least one surprise you might not have come across yet).
Ishaan’s work isn’t finished yet, and he has not yet converted his findings into the SoGive framework, or applied the SoGive moral weights to the problem. (Note that we generally try to express our findings in terms of the SoGive framework and other frameworks, such as multiples of cash, so that our results are meaningful to multiple audiences).
Just to reiterate, neither Ishaan nor I have made very strong statements about cost-effectiveness, because our work isn’t finished yet.
I would be very happy to speak to you (or Ishaan) on the academic literature.
That sounds great, I’ll message you directly. Definitely not wishing to misunderstand or misinterpret—thank you for your engagement on this topic :-)
Thanks for your question Simon, and it was very eagle-eyed of you to notice the difference in moral weights. Good sleuthing! (and more generally, thank you for provoking a very valuable discussion about StrongMinds)
I run SoGive and oversaw the work (then led by Alex Lawsen) to produce our moral weights. I’d be happy to provide further comment on our moral weights, however that might not be the most helpful thing. Here’s my interpretation of (the essence of) your very reasonable question:
I have a simple answer to this: no, it isn’t.
Let me flesh that out. We have (at least) two sources of information:
Academic literature
Data from StrongMinds (e.g. their own evaluation report on themselves, or their regular reporting)
And we have (at least) two things we might ask about:
(a) How effective is the intervention that StrongMinds does, including the quality of evidence for it?
(b) How effective is the management team at StrongMinds?
I’d say that the main crux is the fact that our assessment of the quality of evidence for the intervention (item (a)) is based mostly on item 1 (the academic literature) and not on item 2 (data from StrongMinds).
This is the driver of the comments made by Ishaan above, not the moral weights.
And just to avoid any misunderstandings, I have not here said that the evidence base from the academic literature is really robust—we haven’t finished our assessment yet. I am saying that (unless our remaining work throws up some surprises) it will warrant a more positive tone than your post, and that it may well demonstrate a strong enough evidence base + good enough cost-effectiveness that it’s in the same ballpark as other charities in the GWWC list.
I don’t understand how that’s possible. If you put 3x the weight on StrongMind’s cost-effectiviness viz-a-vis other charities, changing this must move the needle on cost-effectiveness more than anything else. It’s possible to me it could have been “well into the range of gold-standard” and now it’s “just gold-standard” or “silver-standard”. However if something is silver standard, I can’t see any way in which your cost-effectivness being adjusted down by 1/3rd doesn’t massively shift your rating.
I feel like I’m being misunderstood here. I would be very happy to speak to you (or Ishaan) on the academic literature. I think probably best done in a more private forum so we can tease out our differences on this topic. (I can think of at least one surprise you might not have come across yet).
Ishaan’s work isn’t finished yet, and he has not yet converted his findings into the SoGive framework, or applied the SoGive moral weights to the problem. (Note that we generally try to express our findings in terms of the SoGive framework and other frameworks, such as multiples of cash, so that our results are meaningful to multiple audiences).
Just to reiterate, neither Ishaan nor I have made very strong statements about cost-effectiveness, because our work isn’t finished yet.
That sounds great, I’ll message you directly. Definitely not wishing to misunderstand or misinterpret—thank you for your engagement on this topic :-)