Developing a Tool to Assess the Capacity of Out-of-School Time Program Providers to Implement Policy, Systems, and...

Area of Science:

• Public health
• Health promotion
• Program evaluation

Background:

• Assessing public health practitioners' capacity for policy, system, and environment (PSE) change is limited by a lack of measurement tools.
• This study addresses this gap by developing and testing a theory-derived measure for out-of-school time (OST) program providers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a survey instrument to measure the capacity of OST program providers to implement PSE changes.
• To assess OST providers' self-efficacy, social norms, and resource perceptions related to improving student nutrition and physical activity.

Main Methods:

• Collaborated with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's Healthy Out-of-School Time (HOST) Initiative.
• Administered a survey to 185 OST program providers, assessing attitudes, norms, resources, and self-efficacy.
• Utilized exploratory factor analysis to identify underlying constructs of provider capacity.

Main Results:

• A 4-factor model was identified, explaining 44.7% of the variance in provider capacity.
• Key factors included perceptions of social norms and self-efficacy in building support, engaging teams, and implementing action plans.
• The final measure comprised 18 items across these four factors.

Conclusions:

• The developed survey provides a reliable tool for the Alliance to assess OST program provider capacity for PSE change.
• Findings highlight the importance of social norms and self-efficacy in provider capacity for improving child nutrition and physical activity.
• This measure can guide targeted capacity-building interventions and inform the development of future PSE assessment tools.