European guidelines for youth AIDS peer education - University of ...

Equity and empowermentHealth promotion advocates increased citizen participation, community empowerment, intersectoralcollaboration and equity in prevention programmes and health care. This would involve increasedinvolvement by the community, project participants and young people in the evaluation process. Theirinvolvement can not only improve the quality of the evaluation but contribute to a sense of ownership ofthe project and its results. A step in this direction would be to train practitioners in evaluation methods,gain evaluation partners or develop more user-friendly methods.Once the results have been analysed they can be disseminated in a language that project participants, policymakers and young people understand. Knowledge fed back into the community in this way informs decisionmaking and can promote the health of young people.Young people are a valuable resource for refining evaluations so that they address the true HIV issues andproblems. For instance, the language of evaluation questionnaires can be adjusted by young people so thatthey are easily understood and correctly reflect the their meanings and everyday language.Systematic evaluationAn evaluation involves examining systematically and critically a project’s processes and outcomes. Theactual question to be addressed in the evaluation can be set by project participants or someone outside theproject, (for example, sponsors or administrators). Researchers may be interested in gaining scientificknowledge through the evaluation.The evaluation question needs to be well-formulated and address specific problems. It needs to be put into acontext that takes into account the needs of the project, stakeholders and the constraints of cost and time.Otherwise, there is a risk that the evaluation becomes lost in its search for project understanding. As an aidin framing the evaluation, it can be useful to understand what researchers call ‘standards of acceptability’.These provide a context by comparing the project to various standards.‘Arbitrary standards’ are set by sponsors or administrators. They can range from a requirement that theproject reaches a certain percentage of a target group to evidence of reductions in risk behaviours. Using a‘historical standard’ would involve comparing the current condition of the project or target group to that ofa previous period (for example, measuring reduced peer educator drop-out, or increases in positive attitudestowards the project). One can also compare project results to those of other projects carried out in a similargroup of young people – this is referred to as the ‘normative standard’. ‘Scientific standards’ are based onthe use of rigorous evaluation methodologies in order to contribute data to an existing body of knowledgeand to test or develop theories.Regardless of the evaluation question being addressed the evaluation needs to take into account theenvironmental and social context of the project, the content and process of implementations, and theimmediate and long-term effects. There exists a wide range of literature on evaluation in nearly all languagesand the reader is encourage to examine them. The WHO Regional Office for Europe has recently produced aeasy to use booklet, ‘Guidance for Practitioners on Evaluation of Health Promotion Initiatives’, written by JaneSpringett on behalf of the WHO-Euro Working Group on Evaluation of Health Promotion Initiatives 1 .Quantitative vs. qualitative methodsThe debate concerning qualitative versus quantitative methods is often heard in professional and researchcommunities. Quantitative methods have their roots in the positivist scientific tradition that assumesthat objective accounts can be made of the world. The method is able to describe general patterns ofreality and to discover causal relationships between occurrences. The method is often used for assessingthe achievement of project objectives as ‘outcomes’. The use of questionnaire surveys is a commonlyused technique.40 European guidelines for youth AIDS peer education