Evaluating Complex Interventions Using Qualitative Longitudinal Research: A Case Study of Understanding Pathways to Violence Prevention.

Shelly Makleff,Florencia Barindelli,Cicely Marston,Jimena Valades,Jovita Garduño,Mariana Cruz,Rosa Icela Zavala

doi:10.1177/10497323211002146

Abstract

Evaluating social change programs requires methods that account for changes in context, implementation, and participant experience. We present a case study of a school-based partner violence prevention program with young people, where we conducted 33 repeat interviews with nine participants during and after an intervention and analyzed participant trajectories. We show how repeat interviews conducted during and after a social change program were useful in helping us understand how the intervention worked by providing rich contextual information, elucidating gradual shifts among participants, and identifying aspects of the intervention that appear to influence change. Long-term effects of social change interventions are very hard to quantify or measure directly. We argue that a qualitative longitudinal approach provides a way to measure subtle changes that can serve as proxies for longer term impacts.

Highlights

Evaluating social change programs requires methods that account for changes in context, implementation, and participant experience
We found that repeat interviews conducted during and after a social change program helped us learn about intervention effects and explore pathways to change in three main ways: first, by providing rich contextual information that helped interpret participant narratives; second, by elucidating gradual shifts in attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors among participants; third, by identifying aspects of the intervention that appear to influence change
We found that a qualitative longitudinal evaluation approach in social change interventions helped illuminate the process of critical reflection, which plays an important role in intimate partner violence (IPV) prevention programming (Jewkes et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

Evaluating social change programs requires methods that account for changes in context, implementation, and participant experience. There has been an increasing focus on developing culturally and contextually responsive theories of change of Qualitative longitudinal methods, which entail collecting qualitative data over time to center inquiry on temporality and change (Corden & Millar, 2007), can be used to examine how and why change happens in relation to sociocultural context (Holland et al, 2006). This makes them well suited for evaluating social policies or programs in their real-life settings (Calman et al, 2013; Lewis, 2007; Thomson, 2007; Thomson & McLeod, 2015).

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion