Evaluating interventions: focusing on measuring impact at both the individual and community level

Abstract

This chapter seeks to outline the basic concepts and skills needed when evaluating clinically-led (including nurse led) healthcare and health promotion (or prevention) interventions. It starts by seeking to explore why we might undertake an evaluation and, after defining the term evaluation, describes different types of evaluation. Next, it seeks to clarify the differences and overlaps between clinical audit, evaluation, improvement or research. The main body of the chapter describes the ten key steps which need to be considered for a successful evaluation, explains how these steps can be used to construct a logic model evaluation and elaborates on how a variety of different methods can be used to answer different questions within the evaluation framework. The methods for evaluation and quality improvement are compared to see how the latter can be used as part of the process of evaluation. Finally there is a section on health systems, complexity and complex interventions because it is important to see health promotion as a multifactorial intervention in the context of the wider health system