Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change.¶
Campbell, D. T. (1979). Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change. Evaluation and Program Planning, 2(1), 67-90.
Cited by¶
18 citations across 18 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Goodhart's Law
- In policing, reported crime rates as a safety proxy invite reclassification and complaint suppression — the Campbell's-law substrate.
This sourceStates Campbell's law: the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it is to corruption pressures and the more it distorts the processes it monitors — the high-stakes twin of Goodhart's law (policing, education).
- In policing, reported crime rates as a safety proxy invite reclassification and complaint suppression — the Campbell's-law substrate.
- Problem Framing
- It is visible only from a frame wider than the one that produced it, which is why an organization that evaluates each team against its own criterion is structurally poor at detecting it.
This sourceStates that the more a quantitative social indicator is used for decision-making, the more it is subject to corruption pressures and the more apt it is to distort the process it was meant to monitor.
- It is visible only from a frame wider than the one that produced it, which is why an organization that evaluates each team against its own criterion is structurally poor at detecting it.
- Proxy–Target Fidelity
- In management and public administration, key performance indicators proxy for performance: test scores for school quality, response times for service quality, arrest counts for policing effectiveness, citations for research impact — and Campbell's law and the entire literature on metric gaming describe the fidelity eroding under the pressure to score well.
This sourceStates Campbell's law: the more a quantitative indicator is used for decision-making, the more it is subject to corruption and the more it distorts the process it monitors.
- In management and public administration, key performance indicators proxy for performance: test scores for school quality, response times for service quality, arrest counts for policing effectiveness, citations for research impact — and Campbell's law and the entire literature on metric gaming describe the fidelity eroding under the pressure to score well.
- Selection-Visibility Gate
- The coverage target is the proxy failure in miniature: a property was chosen because it could pass the gate, and selection promptly optimized the property instead of the thing it stood for.
This sourceStates that the more a quantitative indicator is used for social decision-making the more it is subject to corruption pressures and the more it distorts the process it was meant to monitor.
- The coverage target is the proxy failure in miniature: a property was chosen because it could pass the gate, and selection promptly optimized the property instead of the thing it stood for.
Domain-specific¶
- Campbell's Law
- Input Manipulation Attack
- That structure genuinely recurs across distinct substrates as co-instances, not resemblances: regulatory arbitrage and tax-shelter design (transactions crafted to fall inside the letter of a rule while defeating its intent), doping that masks against an athletic-testing protocol, money-laundering structuring that keeps transfers under a reporting threshold, biological mimicry that defeats a host's nest-mate recognition, predator camouflage against a prey's perceptual classifier, plagiarism-detector and spam-filter evasion
This sourceCanonical general statement that a rule or indicator used for decision-making comes under adaptive corruption pressure from the parties it governs - the rule-gaming substrates in the enumeration (regulatory arbitrage and tax shelters, doping against a testing protocol, structuring under a reporting threshold, plagiarism-detector and spam-filter evasion), not the biological ones.
- That structure genuinely recurs across distinct substrates as co-instances, not resemblances: regulatory arbitrage and tax-shelter design (transactions crafted to fall inside the letter of a rule while defeating its intent), doping that masks against an athletic-testing protocol, money-laundering structuring that keeps transfers under a reporting threshold, biological mimicry that defeats a host's nest-mate recognition, predator camouflage against a prey's perceptual classifier, plagiarism-detector and spam-filter evasion
Mechanisms¶
- Capacity Milestone Agreement
- Its failure mode is that a milestone is a target, and targets get gamed: once the metric is written down, effort flows to producing the evidence rather than building the capability the evidence was meant to signal — Goodhart's law in miniature.
This sourceShows that decision-linked quantitative indicators invite corruption pressures and can distort the processes they are intended to monitor.
- Its failure mode is that a milestone is a target, and targets get gamed: once the metric is written down, effort flows to producing the evidence rather than building the capability the evidence was meant to signal — Goodhart's law in miniature.
- Enforcement Pattern Dashboard
- Worse, once a metric is watched it can be gamed
This sourceOccasional Paper Series, Paper 8. Public Affairs Center, Dartmouth College (1976). States that decision-linked quantitative indicators face corruption pressures and can distort the processes they monitor.
- Worse, once a metric is watched it can be gamed
- Environmental Indicator Dashboard
- The deepest is Goodhart's law: once an indicator becomes a target that agents are steered by, they adapt to the indicator rather than the underlying goal, and it decays into a number that looks good while the reality it proxied rots.
This sourceShows that decision-linked quantitative indicators invite agents to optimize the measure, corrupting both the indicator and the process it was meant to monitor.
- The deepest is Goodhart's law: once an indicator becomes a target that agents are steered by, they adapt to the indicator rather than the underlying goal, and it decays into a number that looks good while the reality it proxied rots.
- Knowledge Retention Dashboard
- Once a team is managed to the board, the number becomes a target and stops being a faithful measure — agents learn the check items rather than the knowledge, and the board glows green over real decay.
This sourceStates that consequential use of a quantitative social indicator subjects it to corruption pressure and distorts the process it is meant to monitor.
- Once a team is managed to the board, the number becomes a target and stops being a faithful measure — agents learn the check items rather than the knowledge, and the board glows green over real decay.
- Metric Gaming Review
- Its failure mode is captured by Campbell's law — the more a quantitative indicator is used for high-stakes decisions, the more it will be gamed and the more it will corrupt the process it monitors — which applies to the review's own findings if they harden into a new target to dodge.
This sourceStates Campbell’s law: intense decision use of a quantitative indicator creates corruption pressures and distorts the process it is meant to monitor.
- Its failure mode is captured by Campbell's law — the more a quantitative indicator is used for high-stakes decisions, the more it will be gamed and the more it will corrupt the process it monitors — which applies to the review's own findings if they harden into a new target to dodge.
- Perverse Incentive Red Team
- It is the structured antidote to Campbell's law, the observation that the more any indicator is used to allocate rewards, the more it will be gamed and the more it will distort what it measures.
This sourceStates that tying consequential decisions to a quantitative indicator increases pressure to corrupt it and distort the process being measured.
- It is the structured antidote to Campbell's law, the observation that the more any indicator is used to allocate rewards, the more it will be gamed and the more it will distort what it measures.
- Quota or Portfolio Guardrail
- A floor can harden into a ceiling — hit the quota, stop there — and the guarded figure invites gaming or tokenistic compliance, the distortion Campbell's law predicts for any indicator wired to consequences.
This sourceWarns that indicators tied to consequential decisions invite gaming and distortion.
- A floor can harden into a ceiling — hit the quota, stop there — and the guarded figure invites gaming or tokenistic compliance, the distortion Campbell's law predicts for any indicator wired to consequences.
- Randomized Observation Schedule
- And in high-stakes use, unpredictable timing blunts one gaming route while leaving the incentive intact: whatever is measured will still be optimized, per Campbell's Law
This sourceStates that using a quantitative social indicator for decision-making creates corruption pressure and distorts the process the indicator is meant to monitor.
- And in high-stakes use, unpredictable timing blunts one gaming route while leaving the incentive intact: whatever is measured will still be optimized, per Campbell's Law
- Small-Batch Policy Pilot
- Its sharpest failure mode is Campbell's law
This sourceWarns that using quantitative social indicators for decision-making subjects them to corruption pressure and can distort the processes they are intended to monitor.
- Its sharpest failure mode is Campbell's law
- Transparency Report
- Because published metrics become targets, they invite the classic distortion of managing to the number rather than the outcome it was meant to signal.
This sourceShows that decision-linked quantitative indicators invite corruption pressure and can redirect effort away from the outcomes they are meant to monitor.
- Because published metrics become targets, they invite the classic distortion of managing to the number rather than the outcome it was meant to signal.
- Trend Monitoring Dashboard
- Trust-Erosion Metric
- The signals are manipulable, and once trust is managed to a number, the number stops reflecting trust: any social indicator tied to accountability drifts toward corruption of the very thing it measures — Campbell's law.
This sourceStates that using a quantitative social indicator for decision-making subjects it to corruption pressure and can distort the process it is meant to monitor.
- The signals are manipulable, and once trust is managed to a number, the number stops reflecting trust: any social indicator tied to accountability drifts toward corruption of the very thing it measures — Campbell's law.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 18 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 4 other ways.
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-X ×12
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/014971897990048X ×2
- https://doi.org/10.1016/0149-7189(79)90048-x ×1
- https://jmde.com/index.php/jmde_1/article/view/297/ ×1
Registry ID ref:898ebe3cd110 · see in the full table