Evaluating health promotion: doing it by numbers

Abstract

Greater accountability in the use of resources, together with increasing demands for information to justify future programmes, are adding t o the pressure to assess the value of health promotion activities. While there is no questioning of the necessity of evaluation, the debate surrounding the ‘right’ approach has long been an issue for lively exchange. Divergence of opinion partly derives from the different needs generated by the wide range of health promotion activities and settings and, perhaps also, because of the different backgrounds of health promotion professionals. Even when there is some degree of consensus about the appropriate methods to use, the scarcity of earmarked funds for evaluation, and other resource restrictions, can substantially curtail the available choices. The aim of this article is to clarify the meaning and articulate the rationale underlying the use of quantitative approaches in the evaluation of health promotion initiatives, and to provide some guidelines for assessing the quality of such evaluations. The links between the objectives of health promotion and the interpretation of results from such evaluations are highlighted, and some of the main methodological issues involved are discussed. It is hoped that the reader who is unfamiliar with quantitative approaches will gain some insights as to what these techniques can and cannot accomplish. We do not intend to provide a recipe book of technical information, since many issues such as sample selection and data collection and analysis techniques are fully covered elsewhere’-‘.