Evaluating community development programs for health promotion: problems illustrated by a New Zealand example

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Community Development
• Program Evaluation

Background:

• Community development programs in health promotion face evaluation difficulties.
• Previous social science research offers insights into these challenges.

Purpose of the Study:

• To illustrate the problems encountered in evaluating community development programs for health promotion.
• To contextualize these issues within existing evaluation and community development research.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective process evaluation of the Wanganui Community Alcohol Action Program (WCAAP).
• Analysis of WCAAP's components: coordination, education, publicity, and law enforcement.

Main Results:

• Community development programs involve negotiation, leading to shifting problem/solution definitions, complicating evaluation.
• Overly ambitious program goals and technical design problems hinder rigorous evaluation.
• The WCAAP case exemplifies these common evaluation challenges.

Conclusions:

• Large-scale evaluations of community development programs are often impractical.
• Prioritizing critical assessment of policy-making and sharing existing knowledge is more effective.