Background: The "Healthy and Active Fund" involved 17 community-based projects focused on the delivery of physical activity interventions, led by a variety of public and third sector organizations. As a novel, direct approach to capturing impact at this level, these organizations were encouraged to robustly evaluate and monitor their own project's outcomes, with core funds allocated to this process. This study aimed to explore project experiences of planning and completing evaluation activities, to better understand how to support community-based practice improvement.
Methods: In-depth semistructured interviews were completed with individuals who had supported their project's evaluation. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to identify key facilitators and barriers associated with evaluation in this context.
Results: Across 3 identified themes, participants (N = 15, 12 projects) referred to a need for greater organizational capacity and expertise, familiarity with evaluation methods, partnership-working, inclusivity, and flexibility, particularly when collecting data from project beneficiaries. Overarching program support (eg, case officers) was viewed as a valuable resource that was disrupted by COVID-19. Participants highlighted the resilience of their projects when engaging with evaluation processes and acknowledged wider learning across organization networks as a result of this success.
Conclusions: This study shows that projects may benefit from closer support and external expertise for research and evaluation. There is willingness by third sector and public bodies to adopt research and evaluation methods into routine practice, but significant barriers persist. Future programs should continue to support adaptable approaches to evaluation at community-level, to better progress health and well-being goals for diverse populations.
Keywords: COVID-19 impact; evaluation design; hard-to-reach populations; standardized questionnaire tools.