The assumptions were summarized in country-specific program theories. The
“program theory” (see Ehren et al. 2005) served to describe and organize the intended
effects of inspections in each country, the characteristics of inspection and the
mechanisms through which effects are expected to occur. Only assumptions related
to the characteristics of school inspections and expected effects as described in the
previous section were taken into account. A policy scientific approach, consisting of
the following steps, was used to reconstruct these assumptions (Leeuw 2003, p. 7):