Comparing Community Capacities by Local Actors and External Experts: An Audit of Health Promotion Activities in Lenzsiedlung, Hamburg

Abstract

The questionnaire "Capacity building in Neighbourhoods (KEQ)" has five dimensions which are regarded as intermediary outcome results of community health promotion. The questionnaire was to be completed by local actors and thus has some features of self-evaluation. We wanted to find out whether external experts make similar or more critical assessments. We conducted an audit of the health promotion activities in our intervention area (Hamburg neighbourhood Lenzsiedlung) in two steps. Five external health promotion experts functioned as auditors with experience in evaluating good practice projects of health promotion. The first part of the audit was a document-based evaluation, the second part a visit-based one during a two-day stay in the intervention area. In the comparison of local actors' assessments (KEQ questionnaire results) with those of external experts in the document-based audit, the judgements of external experts were more positive on all five dimensions of the questionnaire (deviations from +0.1 to +0.9 on a scale from 1 to 5). In the visit-based audit, there was convergence in the assessments of the local actors and the external experts. They were partly identical; only the dimension "local leadership" was viewed slightly more critically by the external experts. Based on our discussion of the four methodical problems of the comparison, we conclude that, on the whole, local actors do not tend to evaluate their activities too positively. However, if resources are available, one should try to confirm local views of outcomes by external assessments.